






V 



''^ 













»w'>' ■, .. \ 






r '^ ^ 'IT' V, ^ 














Book .H ^1j 






m 



■f^>P^._ ■ J 









"r\ 



\i ' 









"^^kW^W-^^^: 



''iSv^&^in' X 



'/" "^^fk 



'^'mm^m^:^-'^^m^m^'^^^^^ 






^'.^!K^>^ 






^^- 






Wm 



'^^iM -''^NElM -:i^i^]y!-M 






K-|)>r" 










^?«!^ 



;-.v^ 



-^S.-jr 






:^^. 






* ■?' 



f^^'^ 












K^>i 



:r;^^ 



'0£ 



r> 



HISTORY OF WISCONSIN 



UNDEB THE 



ominion of Irance. 



S. S. HEBBERD 



MADISON, WIS.: 

MIDLAND rUBLISHING CO. 

1890. 



'Ob" 



COPYRIGHT, 1890, 

BY 

S. S. HEBBBRD. 



TO MY COMRADES 

OF THE 

GRAND ARMY 0¥ THE REPUBLIC, 

DEPARTMENT OF WISCONSIN, 

THIS EARLY HISTORY OF OUR STATE 

IS DEDICATED. 



PREFACE. 



This book deals with one of the most im- 
portant chapters of American history; and yet 
one heretofore quite unknown. The story of 
the French Empire in America has long been 
invested with a deep dramatic and philosophic 
interest; for, it has been well understood that 
upon the downfall of that dominion depended 
the rise of American liberty. And in these 
pages I hope to show that the French struggle 
for supremacy over the continent was, to a 
large extent, decided by events that took 
place in Wisconsin. Here was the entering 
wedge of disaster and ruin. Here happened 
the real although obscure crisis in a great 
drama of which the Fall of Quebec was merely 
the closing scene. 

The main reason why these matters, have 
not been understood is, that the history of the 
West has yet to be written. Our chief histor- 
ical works have heretofore come from the far 
East; and contemplated at that distance, affairs 
in the West have seemed but dim and trivial 



6 PREFACE. 

episodes in the story of what has happened on 
the narrow strip of land between the Allegha- 
nies and the Atlantic. An adequate history 
of America can not be written from so one- 
sided a point of view. 

But the materials for the new history are 
being gathered rapidh' and in great abundance. 
It is surprising how much light has been 
thrown, within a very few years, upon the 
early history of the West by such great pub- 
lications as the Collection de Manuscripts 
relatifs a la Nouvelle France, the Margry 
Manuscripts, Brymmers Canadian Reports and 
Winsor's Narrative and Critical History; also 
by the invaluable volumes of Faillon, Ferland, 
Tailhan, Harrisse, Suite, Shea, Parkman, 
Neill, Butterfield and others; last but by no 
means least, b\' the material printed in the 
Collections of the Wisconsin and Minnesota 
Historical Societies or preserved in their libra- 
ries. 

And yet the most important part of this 
work remains to be done. The State of Wis- 
consin ought immediately to take measures for 
the exploration of the Archives at Paris where 
there are still sealed up many invaluable papers 
pertaining to her past. Wisconsin, among all 
her sister states, occupies the central and most 



PREFACE. y 

important position in the early annals of the 
country; and her citizens ought to feel a pat- 
riotic interest in having her history brought 
fully to the light. It has been my chief hope 
in writing this book, that it might contribute 
somewhat to that result. 

I have been compelled, in many different 
parts of this volume, to very decidedly dissent 
from the conclusions reached by that eloquent 
and indefatigable historian, Parkman, both in 
his book upon La Salle and that upon the 
Conspiracy of Pontiac. But this, however 
much to be regretted, was unavoidable. Mr. 
Parkman has been amazingly unfortunate in his 
choice of La Salle as his hero and "the chief 
actor in the discovery of the West." The great- 
est genius, Crippled by such misconceptions, 
could only attain to distorted and deceptive 
views. Similarly, although not to the same 
great extent, his account of the Conspiracy of 
Pontiac is defective; and that striking passage 
in Western history remains yet to be described 
from a point of view which has entirely escaped 
his notice. 

I expect and desire to be criticised myself. 
All but the first quarter of this book is, in every 
essential respect, entirely new. The history,, 
especially of the period from 1 700 to 1763, I 



8 PREFACE. 

have been compelled to construct out of data 
widely scattered through the different collect- 
ions of documents; and in work of such a pio- 
neering kind, errors will inevitably be found. 
But for every important statement ample 
reference to authorities has been given. And 
I now dismiss this book, believing that it con- 
tains a faithful picture of events with which 
every citizen of Wisconsin and the West ought 
to be familiar. 

Menomonie, Wis. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

NiCOLET AND RaDISSON — ThE DISCOVERY 

OF THE West. 
1638 — 1662. 

The Men of the Hea, — A Highway to China— Nicolet's 
Journey — His Disenchantment— Visits tlie Mascoutius — 
Eadisson — His First Journey to Wisconsin — Discovers 
the Mississippi — Second Journey — Winters on tlie Chip- 
pewa — The Famine — The Sioux — Eadisson at Hudson's 
Bay. 

CHAPTER n. 

Green Bay and the Jesuit Missions. 

1 66 1 — 1 67 1. 

Menard — Lost in the Wisconsin Wilderness — Martyr- 
dom — Chequamegon Bay — A Barbaric Emporium — Flight 
of the Indians and Kuin of the Mission — The Green Bay 
Kegion — An Oasis in a Western Desert — Allouez — The 
Mascoutins and the Gospel— The Foxes— A Jesuit Em- 
pire. 

CHAPTER HI. 

La Salle and the Coureurs de Bois. 

1672 — 1682. 

La Salle's Hatred of the Jesuits — His Jealousy of Green 
Bay — His Pretended Discoveries — His Colony — Fraudu- 
lent Figures — The Forest Rangers — Their Services to 
France — Their Accusers — The Pioneers of Wisconsin. 



lO CONTENDS. 

CHAPTER IV. 

Nicolas Perrot — France takes Posses- 
sion OF THE West. 
1689. 

Perrot Sent to the "Wisconsin Indians — Accused of Pois- 
oning La Salle — Made Governor of Wisconsin — The Eaid 
on Green Bay — Fort St. Antoine — Peri'ot's Subsequent 
Career — The Chippewas Return to Wisconsin — The Fur- 
Trade — The Secret of Iroquois Glory. 

CHAPTER V. 

The Betrayal of the Foxes. 
1700 — 1 71 2. 

The French Policy — The Curse of Canada— Chafing 
under the Yoke — The Foxes Propose to Emigrate — En- 
ticed to Detroit — Attack by the French — HoiTors of the 
Siege — Escape — Pursuit — Two Thousand Massacred. 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Gauntlet Taken Up. 
171 2 — 1 7 16. 

Vengeance upon the Illinois — Alarm of the French — 
Their Plan — Perrot's Protest- De Louvigny's Expedition 
— The Foxes Waiting their Doom — The Siege — The Sur- 
render—Death of the Chiefs — Mourning for the Dead — 
The One-eyed Hostage. 



CONTENTS . 1 1 

• CHAPTER VII. 
The Great Confederacy. 
1716 — 1726. 

The Continent at Peace — John Law and the Mississippi 
Bubble — Diplomacy of the Foxes — The "Wisconsin Tribes 
United — Alliance with the Sioux — Kival Traders Arm the 
Indians — The Wisconsin Tribes — The lowas — The Chick- 
asaws — The Illinois Gibraltar — Besieged by the Foxes — 
Last Komnant of the Illinois flee. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Extermination by Famine. 

1726 — 1728. 

Grand Council at Green Bay — The French Conciliatoiy 
— Fort Beauharnais Built — The Mask Thrown x\side — 
De Lignery's Expedition — Tigers at their Devotions — 
Unaccountable Delay — Flight of the Prey — The Country 
Laid Waste — The Cold Winter — Glee of the French. 

CHAPTER IX. 

By Fire. 

1728 — 1736. 

Four Thousand Exiles — False Friends — Burning of 
Women and Childi-en — Expeditions of Marin and De Buis- 
son — De Villiers — Foxes Besieged at Bock St. Louis — 
Mas-sacre — A Lull in the Storm — Another Massacre — A 
Woman's Devotion — The Tragedy at Green Bay — Sauks 
and Foxes Expelled — De Noyelle's Expedition — The 
French Fiasco. 



12 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER X. 

The West in Revolt. 

1736— 1752. 

Spreading Flames — Presents for the Foxes — The Chip- 
pewa Chief and his Son — Story of Lac Court Oreilles — 
The Reign of Discontent — Michigan — The Miamis — Euin 
of Frencli Trade — Political Corruption- — The Green Bay 
" Ring" — Marin's Slaughter of the Foxes. 

CHAPTER XL 

The Fall of the French Empire. 

1752 — 1763. 

The Exiles on the Wisconsin — Prairie du Chicn — A 
Barbaric Metropolis — Indian Miners — The Younger Marin 
at Green Bay — Langlade — Splendid Services — Defend- 
ers of a Lost Cause. 

CHAPTER Xn. 
The Conspiracy of Pontiac. 

English Policy in the West — Extent of Pontiac's Con- 
spiracy — The English at Green Bay — Delight of the Wis- 
consin Tribes — Capture of ]Mackinac — The Ottawas 
Overawed — The Death of Pontiac — A Marvellous Blun- 
der — Wisconsin's Part in the Struggle for Liberty — The 
End. 



CHAPTER I. 

NICOLET AND RADISSON — THE DISCOVERY 
OF THE WEST. 

1638-1662. 

The gaze of the French colonists in America 
was, from the very first, drawn to Wisconsin 
as the chief centre of interest in the West. 
Within twenty-five years after the founding of 
the colony at Quebec, some knowledge had 
been gained of Lakes Superior and Winnebago, 
and of the Fox river. The Mascoutins dwell- 
ing upon the river just named had been heard 
of, also another nation living near Lake Win- 
nebago — "the men of the sea," a strange 
people of altogether different language and 
habits from other Lidians. Thus Wisconsin 
had emerged into a certain dim light, while all 
the rest of the vast interior was wrapped in 
darkness. 

The story of "the men of the sea" above all 
else fired the imagination of the French. The 
little band of traders and missionaries gathered 
at Quebec, had no conception of the vastness 
of the continent which they were seeking 



14 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

to control and to convert. As late as 1654, 
the Jesuit, Mercier, declared that it was 
about nine days journey, or a hundred 
leagues from the strange people on Lake 
Winnebago to the sea that separated 
America from China.' And that people, it 
was reported had not only come from the 
ocean but closely resembled the Orientals in 
speech and customs. To the eager fancy of 
the French, Eastern Wisconsin had thus be- 
come the threshold of a fairy-land; and Fox 
river the long sought highway to the riches 
and splendors of the Orient. 

Jean Nicolet was sent, in the year 1638 
probably,^ to negotiate a peace between this 

(1) Relation, 165-1. The idea had thus persisted long 
after Nicolet's trip. 

(2) Those able investigators, Suite and Butterfield have 
put this date in 634. But I am forced to dissent from 
their generally accepted conclusion, for the following 
reasons : 

(a) " Thei'e is no probability," Suite says {Wis. Hi8t. 
Coll. VIII, 193,) " that Nicolet went to Wisconsin in that 
short period of less than ten months — in 1638." The trip 
each way, he asserts, would consume ten weeks. But let 
us see. De Lignery's expedition left the Winnebago vil- 
lage on Doty's Island, August 24; ascended the river 
farther than Nicolet did, employed some days in laying 
waste the country, then turned about and reached Montreal 
September 28 — a period of just thirty-five days. (Cres- 
pel. De Lignery'ff Expedition, Wi.^. His. Coll. X., 51-3.) 
Nicolet could haA-e done his work and returned as quickly. 



NICOLET AND RADISSON. 



15 



mysterious Wisconsin people and some tribes 
living farther eastward. Having already 
passed some ten or twelve years of his life 
among the Indians, he was well fitted for this 
perilous trip of a thousand miles into the 
depths of the wilderness. Going first to the 
Huron country and thence embarking for Wis- 
consin with an escort of but seven savages, he 
safely reached his destination. The strange 
people came forth to greet their visitor with a 
delight tempered with awe. They believed 
him to be a manitou or spirit; and when Nico- 
let discharged his pistols, the women and chil- 
dren fled in dismay, "seeing a man carry 
thunder in both hands." 

Nicolet, on his part, was also the victim of 

the facilities of travel being precisely the same. What 
time now would the trip from Three Rivers to the Winne- 
bagoes have demanded? In KiS^t Bre'beuf made the trip, an 
average one, from Three Rivers to the Huron country in 
thirty days. (Parkman, Jesuits in N. America, 55.) Add- 
ing now fifteen days, a large estimate, as consumed in go- 
ing from the Hurons to the Winnebagoes, we have forty- 
five days. Or for the trip both ways and the doing of all 
that was done, eighty days, instead of the thirty weeks 
that Suite claims as necessary. I do not by any means 
say that the trip was made in eighty days; Suite's church 
register leaves much larger intervals. But the whole basis 
of his argument is thus overthrown. Again, Dablon in 
1670 made an equally difficult journey of 1,500 miles in 40 
days {Relation, liul); Nicolet's journey was not one half 



1 6 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

illusions. Believing that he was about to 
meet a people from the stately Orient, he had 
clothed himself, as a dress of ceremony, with 
a large garment of China damask embroidered 
with flowers and birds of various colors. Thus 
arrayed, and with a pistol in each hand he ad- 
vanced to meet "the men of the sea." In a 
moment all his dreams vanished. He saw be- 
fore him only a mob of savages, plumed but 
naked, differing in no essential respect except 
language, from the red men with whom he had 
dwelt for years. They were in fact, the Win- 
nebagoes, a detached branch of the Sioux or 
Dakota race. 

In spite of these mutual misapprehensions 
the business of the embassy went on well. 

longer. Consult also as to a day's journey , Tailhan in Per- 
rot, Memoire, 240. 

(6) The plain indication of great haste. If Nif'olet had 

nearly a year to spend in Wisconsin, as Suite thinks, would 

he not have made that '" three days journey to the Great 

WatersV" Instead, he concludes his treaties and sets out 

or home. 

(c) The Relations of the disputed years, constantly refer 
to Nicolet, but with no hint of his discoveries — no less 
than twelve such references in 1()3(5 and KiS". Bre'beuf s 
silence is also utterly incredible if Nicolet was then really 
bound for the West. 

(d) " Nicolet had nothing to do with the Jesuits," says 
Suite. On this consult allusions referred to above. The 
argument about Nicolet's marriage need not detain us. 



NICOLET AND RADISSON. i y 

"The news of Nicolet's coming spread to the 
surrounding places; four or five thousand men 
assembled." Each of the chiefs gave a grand 
banquet in honor of their guest; and after the 
feasting the terms of peace were arranged to the 
satisfaction of all. 

Nicolet then made a flying trip up the Fox 
river to the land of the Mascoutins; and there 
heard of the not distant waters of the Missis- 
sippi. "The Sieur Nicolet," writes Vimont, 
"who has penetrated farthest into those dis- 

(e) "Epoch of discovery closed in 1()35." But Nicolet 
was sent not to discover but to negotiate a peace — a mat- 
ter his employers were specially interested in. 

(/) Butterfield's additional arguments; first, that the Ot- 
tawa was closed in 1638, by Iroquois raids. Rather, com- 
munications better than usual. Early that year 12 arti- 
sans and laborers came up from Quebec to work at Huron 
Missions. (Parkman, Jesuits, 127 and 132.) Missionaries 
also came at differenttimes. But 1634wasthe very wor.st of 
years. " Hurons appeared at Three Elvers this year in 
small numbers and in a miserable state of dejection and 
alarm." (Ibid., 52.) Also the colony then in the chaos of 
its re-establishment. 

ig) Buttei-field's argument from the message sent to the 
Hurons in 1G35, is self destructive. The tribes wei"e ever- 
lastingly making treaties between themselves and one of 
these being broken, the whites were appealed to; and as 
soon as possible Nicolet was sent to negotiate. This, in- 
finitely more probable than that his treaty should have been 
broken, and war begun almost before he had started home- 
ward. 
2 



1 8 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

tant countries, says that if he had gone three 
more days up a great river that leads out of 
Green Bay, he would have reached the Great 
Waters." 

Why did this daring man turn back when he 
thus stood on the verge of so great a discov- 
ery? The reasons are not stated but may be 
readily surmised. He had been sent not as an 
explorer, but as an envoy to negotiate peace, 
and his mission was now accomplished. His 
time was evidently limited. Possibly, too, 
when his visions of Chinese mandarins and 
Asiatic pomp had vanished, the Wisconsin 
wilderness had lost its charms. 

Nevertheless Nicolet deserves the highest 
honors. At a time when the English had 
hardly ventured a day's journey from the coast, 
this Frenchman had penetrated almost to the 
heart of the continent. He had lifted the veil 
of mystery that hung over the great West. 
That it so quickl}- fell again, was the fault of 
the times and not of Nicolet. 

More than twenty years elapsed after Nicol- 
et's journev' before another white man reached 
Wisconsin. The fury of the Iroquois had put 
a stop to such distant expeditions. The ruin of 
the Huron missions had, for a time at least, par- 



NICOLET AND RADISSON. 



19 



alyzed the missionaries. Trade languished on 
account of the war and the still more baleful 
influence of monopoly. The work of explor- 
ation and expansion was at a stand-still. 

But in 1658 Radisson and his brother-in-law, 
Groseilliers, began their explorations. For two 
centuries nothing was known of their travels 
except through some obscure mention by co- 
temporary writers. But Radisson had himself 
written an account for the use of the King of 
England, into whose service he had passed; 
and his manuscript, after passing through 
strange fortunes, was finally published in 1885. 
It is written in a curious style, such as might 
be expected from an unscholarly Frenchman 
struggling with the eccentricities of English 
speech; but at every point its truthfulness is 
manifest. 

The travellers, after tarrying for a while 
among the Huron and Ottawa refugees on the 
Manitoulin islands, came to the Pottawattam- 
ies then dwelling on the islands at the entrance 
of Green Bay. Among them they wintered 
and the next spring proceeded to the Mascou- 
tins, who still dwelt on theaipper Fox river, 
where Nicolet had found them twenty years be- 
fore. Radisson admiringly describes these 
Mascoutins as "a faire, proper nation; they 



20 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

arc tall and big and very strong." The sav- 
ages, on their part, regarded the adventurer 
with mingled emotions of delight, amazement, 
and awe. They were astounded, above all else 
by the guns which they "worshipped by blow- 
ing smoke of tobacco instead of sacrifice." 

These reverential savages carried Radisson 
in their canoes up and down the water-courses 
of Wisconsin, whithersoever he desired, and 
in this way, some time during the summer of 
1659, he discovered the Mississippi river. 

"We are fou rmonths on our voyage," Rad- 
isson writes,' "without doing anything but go 
from river to river. We met several sorts of 
people. By the persuasion of some of them, 
we went into ye great river that divides itself 
in 2, where the hurrons Vv'ith some Ottanaks* 
and the wild men that had warrs with them had 
retired. . . . This nation (the Mascou- 
tins) have warrs against those of the forked 
river. It is so called because it has 2 
branches, the one towards the West, the other 
towards the South, w*-'*' we beleeve runs tow- 
ards Mexico by the tokens which they gave 
us." 

(1) Voyages of Radisson, IfiS. 

(2) Hurons and Ottawas who had fled to an island in the 
Mississippi, above Lake Pei)in. 



NICOLET AND RADISSON. 2 I 

After some other details Radisson gives an 
account of "that nation that lives on the other 
river" — evidently meaning the western branch, 
that is, the Missouri. This account is in some 
of its parts, quite mythical; but Radisson does 
not claim to have descended to the Missouri or 
to be here narrating except from hearsay. 
"This," he says, "I have not scene, therefore 
you may beleeve as you please. " 

But his description of what he did see, de- 
monstrates that "the great river" on which he 
travelled, was the Mississippi. And if a doubt 
were possible, it would be set at rest by the 
description of Radisson's discovery given at the 
time by the Jesuits:' "A beautiful river, 
grand, wide, deep and comparable to our ov/n 
great river, the St. Lawrence." 

Radisson was alone on this voyage of dis- 
covery. "The summer I went a hunting," he 
writes," "my brother stayed where he was wel- 
come and put up a great deal of corne that was 
given him." But this inactive life of his 
brother, he says, brought on a fit of sickness; 
and some pages further on he ends his account 
of the discovery of the great river by saying: 
"When I came back I found my brother sick 

(1) Margry, I, 54. 

(2) Voyages, 358. 



22 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

as I said before."' That this fact should have 
heretofore gone unnoticed must be ascribed to 
the amazingly entangled styk; of the careless 
young Frenchman. 

The exploration of Radisson was fourteen 
years prior to that of Marquette. At that time 
there was no mission, not even another white 
man except Groseilliers west of the Alleghan- 
ies. Alone, unaided, with no resources save 
his own skill and courage, he found his way 
into the very depths of the wilderness and ex- 
plored the great river a thousand miles above 
the point reached by De Soto and his army of 
Spaniards. Radisson will be famous when his 
achievement is understood. 

The following year the two travellers re- 
turned to the St. Lawrence; and in the sum- 
mer of 1 66 1 set out on a new exploration. 
This time they proceeded to Lake Superior and 
skirted its southern shore until they reached 
Chequamegon Bay; thence they went five days 
journey in a south-east direction to the village 
of the Hurons. These unhappy refugees, 
driven westward by the L'oquois. had settled, 
some years before, on an island in the Missis- 
sippi above Lake Pepin, but they had been 
forced back by the Sioux and had now found 

(1) Ibid., 169. 



NICOLET AND BADISSOX. 23 

a second asylum in the dense forests around 
the head waters of the Chippewa. ' Among 
this poor people, the travellers were received 
like beings from another planet. There were 
great feastings and rejoicings in their honor. 
"We were demi-gods," says Radisson. 

But soon winter set in with an extraordinary 
depth of snow. The Hurons, an agricultural 
people, were poor hunters at best, and now 
hunting was impossible. A frightful famine 
ensued. The wretched refugees, already a 
dispirited and demoralized people, succumbed 
almost without an effort to these new horrors. 
Their only food was the bark of trees or vines 
and old beaver skins dug out from the filth of 
their cabins. " We became the very image of 
death," writes Radisson. "Here are above 
500 dead, men, women and children." 

After two months the famine ended and life 
became less forlorn. Soon the travelers were 
visited by a large body of the Sioux who then 
occupied Northwestern Wisconsin and North- 

(I) The village was nearer the mouth of Montreal river 
than to Chequamegon Bay (Radisson, Voyages, 193.) It 
"was three days journey from Chequamegon and seven or 
eight from Green Bay. (Tailhau in Perrot. Moeurs des 
Sauvages, 240.) It was near a little lake about eight leagues 
in circuit. 



24 



HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 



ern Minnesota. The Sioux, gathered in coun- 
cil, said that they had come to make a sacrifice 
to the French, who were masters of all things. 
They asked for aid against their enemies, the 
Christinos, and pledged themselves to fidelity 
even unto death. Above all, they begged for 
guns. "The true means to get the victory," 
they said, "was to have a thunder." 

The two explorers soon afterward visited the 
Sioux in their Minnesota homes and also the 
Christinos, living to the northwest of Lake 
Superior. Everywhere they were welcomed 
with that delight and awe which always char- 
acterized the first meeting of the red man with 
the white. Finally, late in the summer of 
1662, they returned to the St. Lawrence with 
sixty canoes and furs to the value of 200,000 
livres — the well-earned reward of splendid 
labors. 

But the governor of the colony was bent 
upon robbing them. Even when they set out 
on their second journey of exploration they 
had been compelled, in order to escape his ex- 
tortions, to slip away at mid-night like crim- 
inals bent upon some base design. His rapacity 
was now greatly increased by the sight of their 
riches; and they, becoming tired of his plun- 



NICOLET AND RADISSON. 2 5 

dering, fled to Boston and thence sailed for 
England.' There they were grandly received, 
became honored guests in lordly mansions, 
and Radisson married the daughter of Sir John 
Kirk. In 1667 the two explorers, at the head 
of an English expedition, sailed for Hudson's 
Bay and established trading posts there, with 
the design of drawing the rich fur trade of the 
Northwest away from Canada. They thus be- 
came the founders of the famous Hudson's Bay 
Company. 

After a while, having quarreled with some 
of the of^cers of the company, they returned 
to the service of France, and in 1682 re- 
appeared at Hudson's Bay, seized an English 
ship, captured their former associates and 
raised the French flag over Port Nelson. "^ But on 
their return to Paris, the English ambassador 
urgently entreated them to go back to England. 
Radisson's wife was still there and the two 
Frenchmen were soon persuaded ^ to re-enter the 
English service. In 1684, they again sailed for 

(1) Colonie Francaise, III, 311. Lettre de Marie d' In- 
carnation, 27 Aout, 1670. Groseillier's wife and chil- 
dren remained in Canada. 

(2) Rapport de M. de Meules au Miniatre, 4 Nov., 1683. 
Collection de Manuscripts relatifs a la Nouvelle France, 
II, 302-i. 

(3) Neill. Minnesota, Hist. Collections, V. 414. 



26 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

Hudson's Bay, lowered the lilies of France and 
hoisted the English flag, which ever since has 
floated over half the continent. 

Radisson, reviewing these many changes, 
stoutly avers that he does not "in the least 
deserve to be taxed with lightness or incon- 
stancy.'" It matters but little: French des- 
potism and an English wife are a full excuse 
for all such aberrations. This gay, rollicking 
Frenchman was a wise, brave, honest and great 
man. Few careers have blended so much of 
romance and solid service as his. The discov- 
ery of the Mississippi, the first exploration of 
Lake Superior, the founding of a vast com- 
mercial enterprise which for two centuries con- 
trolled half the continent — how many among 
the famous have done so much as this .'' 

(1) Voyages of Radisson, p. 2i9. Also 241 and 250-3. 



CHAPTER II. 

GREEN BAY AND THE JESUIT MISSIONS. 
1665-1672. 

The ruin of the Huron missions did not 
cause the Jesuits to despair. Their first failure 
served only to open before them a wider hori- 
zon of duty, just as the night reveals what the 
day hides. The West was just then beginning 
to rise into view, and towards it the Jesuits 
turned as to a new land of promise. Thither 
they were also called by their duty to their 
Huron and other converts who, wandering about 
in exile, were in great danger of being wholly 
lost to the fold. 

In August 1660, Father Menard set out for 
the West, and after frightful sufferings by the 
way, reached a settlement of the Ottawas at 
Keweenaw Point, on Lake Superior.' These 
fugitive Ottawas, of whom we shall hear much 
throughout this history, were now in the low- 
est depth of savage wretchedness. They had 
been driven from their old homes by the Iro- 
quois, and the steps of their wandering had all 

(1) Verwyst. Missionary Labors of Marquette, Men- 
ard, etc., 176. 



28 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

been steps downward. Misery had brutalized 
them; they had lost that self-respect which 
formed the sole basis of savage virtues. A 
year after Menard's visit, Radisson met them 
in the forests of Northern Wisconsin; and he 
describes them, as "the coursedst, unablest, 
the unfamous and cowarliest people that I have 
seen among four score nations that I have 
frequented.'" 

Their treatment of Menard was most in- 
human; they mocked at his teachings and at 
last drove him from their cabins. In the depth 
of winter he was forced to make such a shelter 
as he could out of a few pine boughs. There 
amidst winter blasts, snow-storms and the in- 
tensest cold — half famished too, with no food 
but acorns, bark and vile refuse — this feeble 
old man crouched from day to day, a living 
martyr. 

Still this marvellous man did not murmur. 
"I can trul}' say," he wrote, "that I have 
more contentment here in one day than I have 
enjoyed in all my life in whatsoever part of the 
world I have been."^ 

The next June he started to establish a mis- 
sion among the Hurons who, as we have seen, 

(1) Voyages, 203. 

(2) Relation, 1664, p. 6. 



GREEN BA Y— JES UIT MISSIOXS. 2 9 

had found a refuge on the head-waters of the 
Chippewa. On the way he was deserted by 
his guides, but he pressed on until he had 
reached a point not very far distant from the 
Huron village. There he perished in the wil- 
derness. The precise manner of his death has 
never been known. But in some way or other 
,the old missionary gained his coveted crown of 
martyrdom. 

Menard was thus Wisconsin's first missionary 
and her first martyr. In 1665 Allouez was sent 
to take his place; but in the meantime the 
Hurons and Ottawas had removed from the 
interior wilds to the head of Chequamegon 
Bay. Thither Allouez repaired, built a rude 
bark chapel and established the first mission in 
Wisconsin. 

This place, where Radisson in 1661 had 
found only a solitude, had now become a ren- 
dezvous for the nations on the West. The 
Hurons and Ottawas had come first, attracted 
by the abundant fisheries and the opportuni- 
ties for traffic. Other tribes had followed, 
some coming to trade and to fish, others as 
fugitives from the fury of the Iroquois who 
were then invading the West. Here were 
crowds of Sauks, Pottawattamies, Foxes and 
other tribes from Eastern Wisconsin as well as 



30 



HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 



large numbers of the dispersed and panic- 
stricken Illinois. "It is the center," writes 
Allouez, "of all the nations of that country." 
Amidst these animated scenes, Allouez 
labored with ardor, but with uncertain success. 
He himself was sanguine. "God," he affirms' 
"found some of his Elect in every tribe while 
they were held here by fear of the Iroquois." 
The illustrious Marquette, who came after- 
wards, expressed himself less hopefully. But 
the work, whatever its value, was soon ended. 
The Iroquois, exhausted by constant fight- 
ing and curbed by the power of the French, 
ceased their invasions and the Western Indians 
returned to their homes. The Hurons and 
Ottawas remained, but in 1670 the Sioux drove 
them eastward just as the Iroquois, a few years 
before, had driven them westward. The mis- 
sionaries followed their flock to the shore of 
Lake Huron. The short life of the mission of 
St. Esprit was over and Northern Wisconsin 
Avas once more a solitude. 

It has long been noticed that there was a re- 
markable massing of Indian tribes along Green 
Bay and Fox river, in Wisconsin. But how 
great was this massing and how utter the con- 

(1) Relation, 1667, p. 18. 



GREEN BA T— JES UIT MISSIONS. 3 1 ' 

trast between it and the desolation that about 
1670, reigned everywhere else between the 
Alleghanies and the Upper Mississippi — has, 
so far as I know, never been pointed out. 

When Marquette and Joliet journeyed down 
the Mississippi in 1673, they traveled almost 
the entire distanee through an unbroken soli- 
tude. They met, indeed, one demoralized 
band of the Illinois who had fled from their 
homes and w^ere temporarily encamped near 
the Mississippi, on its western side. But with 
this exception, in the long journey from the 
Wisconsin portage down to a great distance 
below the mouth of the Ohio — more than a 
thousand miles through the fairest portion of 
the continent — the travelers beheld only a 
tenantless waste, an unpeopled Paradise. 

The great expanse stretching from the Mis- 
sissippi, eastwardly, to the mountains, was vir- 
tually in the same condition. The Eries, who 
had inhabited the present state of Ohio, had 
been swept from the earth by the Iroquois. 
Michigan was also a solitude, except its north- 
ern part, where the Ottawa refugees and some 
of the Chippewas had gathered around the 
straits of Mackinaw and upon the shore of 
Lake Superior; its southern part had been 
occupied by the Mascoutins, but the most of 



32 



HISTORY OF WISCOXSIN. 



them had been destroyed by the Neutral na- 
tion and the rest driven to their kindred in 
Wisconsin.' Indiana had been the home of 
the Miamis, and a part of them were still 
roaming there; but the main body with the 
king of the confederacy at their head had emi- 
grated to Fox river. Illinois \va.s also a soli- 
tude, its former denizens having fled across the 
Mississippi, leaving their broad prairies, 
crowded with buffalo and game of every kind, 
as a hunting ground for the Wisconsin Indians. 
In Kentucky a few hundred Shawanoes roamed 
along the banks of the Ohio.^ In fine, the six 
states lying east of the Mississippi and north 
of the Ohio — excluding Northeastern Wis- 
consin — contained a population in 1670, of 
less than twelve hundred warriors or eight 
thousand souls. There were three hundred 
thousand square miles of territory, rich in soil 
and in all things that contribute to human pros- 

(1) Lalemant. Relation des Hurons, 1644. On Sanson's 
map they are placed in Southern Michigan. Parkman, 
Jesuits, 436. Note. 

(2) La Salle, in 1682, counted the Shawanoes as 200vrar- 
riors. Parkman, La Salle, 296. I have estimated the 
Ottawas and Chippewas in Nortliern Michigan at 500 war- 
riors — a very large estimate, as most of the Chippewas 
were then wanderers on the nortli sliore of Lake Superior. 
The Miamis remaining in their old home, I have put at 500 
■warriors — also a large estimate. 



GREEN BA Y— JES Ul T MISSIONS. 3 3 

perity; and yet this immense expanse was 
virtually a solitude. 

Turning now to Northeastern Wisconsin we 
behold a wonderful contrast. Stretched along 
both sides of Green Bay and the Fox river as 
far south as Green Lake county was a terri- 
tory about one hundred and thirty-five miles 
long and of an average width of thirty miles, 
which fairly teemed with human life. In the 
North, on the islands and along the eastern 
shore of Green Bay, were the Pottawattamies, 
a docile people, with a keen instinct for trade, 
who were seeking to become the middlemen 
in the commerce between the French and the 
tribes farther west; they numbered not less 
than five hundred warriors.' Across the bay 
were the Menominees settled upon the river of 
the same name, a brave but peaceful people — 
"very fine men," writes Charlevoix,'' "the best 
shaped in all Canada." At the mouth of Fox 
river was a mixed village gathered from four 

(1) Allouez. Relation, 1667, — narrates a visit of 300 
of these warriors to Chequamegon Bay. 

(2) Cliarlevoix, Letters, XIX. 202. Cadillac (Memoire in 
Margry, V, 121) is still more eulogistic. They were long 
at war with the Chippewas, but in the time of the French al- 
most uniformly peaceable. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, I, 
304, and Shea, Indian Tribes of Wisconsin, Wis. Hist. 
Coll., Ill, 134. 

3 



34 



HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 



or five different tribes; a little distance up the 
river were the Winnebagoes or "Men of the 
Sea," of whom we have already heard. The 
number of the Winnebagoes, the Menominees 
and the people of the mixed village could not 
have been less than six hundred warriors.' On 
the west side of the river, about four leagues 
from its mouth were the Sauks, who must have 
numbered at least four hundred fighting men.'' 
Passing through Lake Winnebago to the 
Upper Fox and its tributary the Wolf, we come 
to that famous gathering of tribes that were to 
bring such disaster upon the French Empire in 
the West. Some distance up the Wolf river 
were the Foxes, with not less than eight hun- 

(1) No estimate of the numbers either of the Menominees 
or Winnebagoes is given in the 17tli century. But in a 
Memoir of 1736 {New York Col. Documents, IX,) the Men- 
ominees are numbered at IGO warriors. But this Memoir 
is uniformly low in its estimates. Even the Iroquois are 
there counted as only 850 and the Illinois at (500, and the 
Miamis at 550; tlie real numbers, excepting those of the Il- 
linois were perhaps twice as large. In tliis Memoir the 
Winnebagos are put at only 80 warriors; but this was after 
they had been decimated b}' famine and expelled from the 
state; in 1640 their great numbers are spoken of {Margry, 
1, 48). I have for these reasons increased the French esti- 
mate of 1736 by 50 per cent, for 1670. 

(2) In the Memoir of 17:i6 they are put at 150 warriors — 
a low estimate even for that time, and then they had been 
decimated by the Fox wars. In 1763 Lieut. Gorrel put 
them at 350, as also Foxes. Wis. Hist. Coll., I, 32. 



GREEN BA Y— JES UIT MISSIONS. 3 5 

dred warriors. ' To the southwest of these, on 
the Fox river, was the great palisaded town 
where the Mascoutins and Miamis dwelt to- 
gether in barbaric friendliness; farther on, en- 
veloped in the wild rice marshes, were other 
towns of' the Kickapoos and Mascoutins; all 
these tribes together could not have numbered 
less than the Foxes/ 

Here then in this narrow strip of territory 
was a population of thirty-one hundred war- 
riors or at least twenty thousand souls, nearly 
three times the number that roamed in the vast 
expanse of surrounding solitude. It was like 
an oasis in a desert. 

What caused this wonderful massing of 
tribes.^ In the first place, the land was excep- 
tionally rich in all essentials of barbaric plenty. 
Charlevoix declared that it was "the most 



(1) Relation, 1667, estimated the E'oxesat 1,000 warriors. 
Relation of 1670 at 400, on the first, hasty inspection. But 
the next year they are said to have 200 cabins, each con- 
taining Ave or ten families; so that the estimate of 1667 
must have been nearer right than that of 1670. All the 
facts of their svibsequent history also coiToborate tliis. 

(2) Perrot, McRurs des Sauvages, p. 127, puts population 
of chief town of Mascoutins and Miamis at 4,000 souls. Al- 
louez, Relation, 1670, at more than 3,000, at another time at 
800 warriors. In the Narrative of Occurrences, 1695, New 
York Coll. Docts., IX, 608. Frontenac puts the Foxes, Mas- 
coutins and Kicliapoos at 1,500 warriors. This does not 
include the Miamis, so that my estimate is very low. 



36 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

charming country in the world."' The lakes 
and rivers were full of fish and the forest of 
game; fuel was plenty; the soil was easy to till 
and yielded richly. But the crowning attrac- 
tion, doubtless, was the wild rice marshes, 
offering an abundant harvest without any labor 
save that of gathering it in the autumn. There 
indeed, was the Indian Utopia. 

Secondly, all the population excepting the 
Winnebagos were of the Algonquin stock and 
they were here admirably sheltered from the 
two great foes of their race, the Iroquois on 
the East, and the Sioux or Dakotas on the 
West. The approach on the one side was 
guarded by a great lake and the bristling rapids 
of Fox river; on the other side, were impass- 
able swamps, deep forests and the winding 
mazes of a river enveloped in marshes. Thus 
this region offered peace as well as plenty to its 
inhabitants. ' ' It is a terrestial Paradise, " wrote 
Dablon; "but the way to it is as difficult as 
the way to heaven." Savages, at least, could 
desire nothing beyond that — a paradise safely 
locked from one's enemies. 

The great gathering of the tribes along 
Green Bay and Fox river is thus easily ex- 
plained. Consider now the commanding po- 
ll) Lettres, XIX, 203. 



GREEN BAY— JESUIT MISSIONS. 



37 



sition occupied by this region between the 
Great Lakes and the Mississippi, making it 
virtually the key to the interior of the conti- 
nent. Thus we already begin to understand 
why Wisconsin was to become the focus of the 
French struggle for supremacy in the West. 

The instability of the mission at Chequame- 
gon Bay had been manifest for some time be- 
fore the final collapse; and the Jesuits had 
eagerly sought for some more permanent 
foundation on which to build. They were 
spurred on to such a work by the rising hostil- 
ity against their order. Their prestige had 
greatly waned and many of the colonists were 
rebelling against their rigid rule. "For more 
than thirty years, " writes Le Clerc, ' ' ' they have 
complained in Canada of the hampering of their 
consciences." The Jesuit missions which had 
once set all France aflame with enthusiasm, 
began to be sharply criticised. Talon, the in- 
tendant of Canada, wrote to Colbert: "I have 
reproached the Jesuits as courteously as pos- 
sible with paying too little attention to the 
civilizing and education of the savages. "^ Stung 
by such reproaches and by still graver charges, 

(1) Le Clerc, Etablissement de la Foi, II, 84. 

(2) Margry, I, 79. 



38 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

the disciples of Loyola sought for a new field 
where they might establish themselves firmly 
and reconstruct society according to the ideals 
of Jesuitism. Their choice, almost inevitably, 
fell upon the Green Bay region. 

Allouez was sent to make a beginning. In 
December, 1-669, he landed at the head of 
Green Bay, spent the winter in the vicinity 
and the next spring ascended the river to visit 
the Foxes and Mascoutins. Returning to the 
Bay he was joined in September by Dablon, 
the Superior of the Jesuit missions on the 
lakes. Having established the mission of St. 
Francois Xavicr, the two Fathers went to labor 
among the Mascoutins. The journey over 
the Fox rapids was arduous. "But as a fe- 
compense for all our difificulties," Dablon 
writes, " we enter the most beautiful country 
that ever was seen; prairies on all sides as 
far as the eye can reach, divided by a river 
which gently flows through them, and on 
which to float by rowing is to repose one's 
self; there are forests of elms, oaks, etc.; 
vines, plum-trees, apple-trees are in abund- 
ance and seem by their appearance to invite 
the traveller to disembark and taste of their 
fruits," They saw also great clouds of wild- 
fowl floating over the harvest of wild-rice that 



OREEN BA Y— JES Ul T MI SSI OXS. 3 9 

lined the river on either side. And game of 
every kind was so plentiful that it could be 
killed almost without an effort.' 

Paddling through this savage elysium, they 
reached the chief abode of the Mascoutins. It 
was a palisaded town standing on the crown of 
a hill about a league from the river bank; 
while all around the prairie stretched beyond 
the sight, interspersed with groves and belts 
of tall forest. The Mascoutins with the 
characteristic hospitality of the red man, had 
received the fugitive Miamis into their town. 
They had even accepted the Miami king as 
their ruler; and this potentate guarded day 
and night by a band of armed warriors, reigned 
over all with a pomp quite unparalleled in 
Indian politics. 

On his previous visit Allouez had been re- 
ceived like one from the clouds.' and the rever- 
ence of the savages now was not abated. They 
listened with open ears, beset him night and 
day with questions, invited him and the Father 
Superior to unceasing feasts. Some were bap- 
tized. A cross was planted in the midst of 
the town, and three years afterward Marquette 
saw it still standing, decorated with deer- 



(1) Relation, 1671, j). 43-44. 

(2) Relation. 1670, p. 100. 



40 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

skins, red-girdles, and other offerings to the 
Great Manitou of the French. 

But the Foxes were not so complaisant. 
On his first visit to their town on Wolf river, 
Allouez had been extremely horrified. ' ' They 
are a nation," he grimly observes, "renowned 
for being numerous; each man commonly has 
four wives, some six and others ten." The 
Foxes, on their part, "had had a very poor 
opinion of the French ever since two traders 
in beaver skins had appeared among them." 
Towards the new faith they maintained a ju- 
dicial reserve. "They allow the majesty 
and unity of God," Allouez writes; "of the 
"rest they say not a word," An old man, 
the grand chief of the Foxes, thanked the mis- 
sionary for his visit. "But as for these other 
things," he continued, "we have no leisure to 
speak; we are occupied in bewailing our 
dead."' 

On the second visit the Foxes proved still 
more obdurate. The year before some of their 
number had visited Montreal, and there had 
been shamefully abused by the soldiery;'' and 
"now they were determined to avenge them- 

(1) Ibid., p. 98. 

(2) Faillon, ColonieFrancaise, III,'S{y2. A vivid picture of 
the brutality of tlip soldiery. The Indians were often mur- 
dered for their furs, on their visits to Montreal. 



GREEN BA Y— JES UIT MISSIONS. 4 1 

selves for the bad treatment they had re- 
ceived in the French settlements." But Al- 
louez armed himself with patience and with all 
the arts of Jesuitic wisdom. He exhibited 
highly colored paintings of judgment and eter- 
nal flames. "The parents," he remarks, 
"were happy to see their baptized children at 
the top of the picture, while they were horri- 
fied to behold the torments of the devils at the 
foot." 

In another way the missionary availed him- 
self of that master passion in the Indian's heart, 
his love of his children. With soft blandish- 
ments, Allouez first won the children to his 
side. "He sang to them spiritual songs with 
French airs which pleased them and their 
parents immensely. Then he composed cer- 
tain canticles against the superstitions and 
vices most opposed to Christ. These he taught 
to the children by the sound of a soft lute, and 
went about the village with his little savage 
musicians, declaring war against the jugglers, 
the dreamers and those with many wives. 
And because the savages, passionately loved 
their children and suffered everything from 
them, they permitted the biting reproaches 
which were made against them by these songs. "' 

(1) Relation, 1672, p. 39-40. 



42 



HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 



Gradually the Foxes succumbed. Sixty 
children and some adults were baptized; the 
whole village learned to make the sign of the 
cross. All revered the black-robed stranger 
as at least a mighty magician armed with a 
mysterious power, and possessed of more po- 
tent spells than had ever before been witnessed 
in the wilderness. One day a war-party were 
so wrought upon by the harangues of Allouez, 
that they daubed the figure of a cross upon 
their shields of bull-hide, before going to 
battle; they returned victorious, extolling the 
sacred symbol as the greatest of "war-medi- 
cines." This test convinced multitudes. It is 
the first recorded attempt to apply the scien- 
tific method to the verifying of religious truth. 

The Jesuits rejoiced. "We have good 
hope" they said, "that we shall soon carry 
our faith to the famous river called the Mis- 
sissippi and perhaps even to the South Sea." 
The missionaries had found favor in the eyes 
of all the tribes and a firm foothold had been 
gained amidst the only permanent population 
east of the great river. A central mission had 
been established at De Pere, five miles above 
the mouth of the Fox, with outlying stations 
among the various tribes. To be sure it was 
but a beginning; the central chapel was as yet 



GREEN BA Y— JES UIT MISSIONS. 4 3 

but a flimsy structure of bark. But as Dablon 
had said, "the way to heaven is as open 
through a roof of bark as through a roof of 
gold and silver." 

Five years later a more substantial church 
was built, and within the palisaded enclosure 
of the mission were also dwellings, work- 
shops and store-houses. Besides the two mis- 
sionaries Allouez and Andre, there were also 
lay brothers 'and hired workmen, some em- 
ployed in building, hunting, fishing, clearing 
and tilling the soil, others as blacksmiths, 
gunsmiths, and it would seem that there was 
even a silversmith there. "^ The western trad- 
ers also, made the mission their rendezvous 
and stored their furs wuthin its stockade. The 
scene was a rude and rough one, but the ar- 
dent missionaries saw in it the nucleus of a 
new Paraguay — another Jesuit empire rising 
in the wilds of North America. 

(1) Margry, 11,251. 

(2) Butler, Early Historic Relics, Wis. Hist. Coll., VII. 
295. 



CHAPTER III. 

LA SALLE AND THE COUREURS DE BOLS. 
1672 — 1683. 

A little while after the establishment of the 
mission at Green Bay, Frontenac became gov- 
ernor of New France. The new governor 
seems to have set his heart chiefly upon two 
things: the one to harry the Jesuits, the 
other to monopolize for himself, so far as pos- 
sible, the fur-trade of the West. "With the 
Jesuits," he declared," "the conversion of souls 
is but a pious phrase for trading in beaver- 
skins;" and in another dispatch he affirmed,^ 
"that the most of their missions are pure mock- 
eries." As for the fur-trade, in order to mo- 
nopolize that, he made use of several agents or 
secret partners, chief among whom was the 
celebrated La Salle. 

Upon La Salle's career we wish to dwell 
only so far as it pertains to the history of Wis- 
consin. But such a glamour of romance has 
been thrown around his name by his impas- 
sioned admirers and his real relation to West- 
CD Frontenac a Colbert, Nov. 2, 1672. Margry, I, 248. 
(2) Ibid., Nov. U, 1(!74. Ibid., 250. 



LA SALLE— COUREURS DE BOIS. 45 

ern affairs has been so thoroughly misunder- 
stood that our research must take a rather wide 
range. 

La Salle was a fit agent for such a man as 
Frontenac. He was bold, unscrupulous, ready 
for anything that could help on his schemes. 
In hatred of the Jesuits, he surpassed even his 
master. La Salle's soul was surcharged with 
suspicions of everybody, but especially of the 
missionaries. Imaginary Jesuits dogged his 
footsteps everywhere; they tried to seduce him 
from the path of chastity; they encouraged his 
men to desert, soured the minds of the sav- 
ages against him, thwarted his enterprises 
and plotted against his life.' 

It is not worth our while to inquire what 
basis of fact may have underlain these dreams 
of a disordered fancy. Humanity is sinful; 
and the Jesuits, it must be confessed, were 
human. 

All of La Salle's hatred of the Jesuits con- 
verged upon the mission at Green Bay. He 
claimed for himself nearly the whole Missis- 
sippi valley by virtue of his alleged discover- 
ies; but he laid special stress upon the right to 
the Wisconsin river. He had even protested 
against Du Lhut's — who was another secret 

(1) Parkman, La Salle, 101-7. 



46 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

partner of Frontenac — going by that route to 
trade with the Sioux. "If they go by the way 
of the Wisconsin where I have founded an es- 
tablishment," he wrote,' " they will ruin the 
trade, which is my chief reliance." Therefore 
he was madly jealous of the mission at Green 
Bay through which the Jesuits controlled the 
chief water-way to the West and were seeking 
to build up a rival empire to his own. "They 
hold the key to the beaver-country," he for- 
lornly complained. 

What rendered La Salle still more jealous 
was the fact that his own vast claims were ut- 
terly baseless. The only domain that he could 
really claim, by right of discovery, was the 
region of the Mississippi below the mouth of 
the Arkansas; and even that had been explored 
by the Spaniards more than a century before. 
To show any color of right to the country 
north of the Arkansas, he was driven to the 
most enormous fabrications. 

In an account of La Salle's explorations writ- 
ten by a nameless friend of his and taken from 
his own lips, it is asserted that he made two 
journeys in 1669-71; the one down the Ohio 
nearly to its mouth, the other down the Illinois 
to the Mississippi and beyond. The story of 

(1) Margry, II, 251. 



LA SALLE— COUREURS DE BOIS. 47 

the last journey is now coldly dismissed as 
false even by La Salle's most rapt admirer. 
But the claim to the discovery of the Ohio has 
heretofore gone unchallenged. 

La Salle's own statement deserves no credit; 
for since one part of his story is confessedly 
false, the maxim, falsus in iino, must prevail. 
His claim, however, has seemed to have a real 
support in Joliet's map of 1674, on which the 
Ohio is laid down with an inscription to the 
effect that it had been explored by La Salle. 
But a closer scrutiny reveals that the route of 
La Salle has been drawn by a later hand, after 
the map was finished.' The only support 
therefore vanishes. And in a note below I 
have given some additional reasons for believ- 
ing that La Salle's discovery of the Ohio was 
but another invention of his own unscrupulous 
brain. - 

(1) Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America, 
IV, 215. " The route of La Salle is seemingly drawn by a 
later hand and the stream is without the coloring given to 
the other rivers. In its course, too, it runs athwart the 
vignette suiTounding the scale at the bottom of the map 
as if added after that was made." 

(2) The account given both in the Paris memoir and in 
that to Frontenac is so absurdly incorrect as to prove that 
La Salle was only repeating reports gathered from the 
Iroquois amongst whom he wintered in 1669. The rapids 
at Louisville described as a very high fall and the great 



48 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

Claiming almost the whole West by virtue 
of these pretended discoveries, La Salle in 1682 
began to entrench himself on Rock St. Louis 
by the side of the Illinois river. In his wooden 
castle, on this formidable cliff, he was to reign 
as a feudal lord over half a continent, gather- 
ing the Western savages around him as his 
vassals. Wisconsin and the whole Upper Mis- 
sissippi region were to become tributary to his 

error as to their location, the "very large river" from 
the north flowing into the Ohio above the fall and the 
marshy country in which the river sinks and is lost below 
the fall, the six or seven leagues that separate Lake Erie 
from the Ohio, the twenty-four men who desert and flee 
some to New England and some to New Holland — it is 
wonderful that so many blunders and absurdities could be 
crowded into fifteen lines. — Parkman, La Salle, 23-4, gives 
both accounts without suspicion. 

Perrot {Moeurs des Sauvages, 110-120,) says that in the 
summer of 1670, he met La Salle hunting on the Ottawa 
with a party of Iroquois. The account states that La Salle 
separated from the priests, Sept. 30, 1669, being then sick 
of a fever, made a visit to the Onondagas, thence made an 
exploring trip to the Ohio and retiirn, of 800 leagues. Who 
can believe that all this took place in time for La Salle to 
go far north on the Ottawa for a leisurely summer hunt? 

The manner of putting forth this claim — the long silence, 
the sudden assertion in 1677 and 167S, the subsequent 
silence — is proof enough. In the Relation des Decouvertes, 
1681, it is stated that a violent fever obliged him to quit 
the priests at the beginning of their explorations, and 
there is not a hint of any subsequent journey of his own 
to the Ohio.— (Margry, 11, 436. 



LA SALLE— COUREURS DE BOIS. 49 

ambition; the Jesuits at Green Bay were to be 
checkmated in their evil designs. "La Salle 
keeps in the background," Frontenac's succesor 
wrote to the Minister, "with the idea of at- 
tracting the inhabitants to him and building 
up an imaginary kingdom for himself by de- 
bauching all the bankrupts and idlers of this 
country." 

The scheme, according to his own assertions, 
prospered wonderfully. In a memorial to the 
king, he reports the number of Indians col- 
lected around Rock St. Louis at four thousand 
warriors, or more than twenty thousand souls. 
This great concourse of savages had fled to him 
for protection; organized by his genius and 
obedient to his will, they formed a mighty 
barrier to any future invasions of the West by 
the Iroquois. "The diplomacy of La Salle," 
writes his eloquent panegyrist, "had been 
crowned with a marvelous success."' 

But La Salle's claim is wholly fraudulent, 
and the only marvel about it is, that the fraud 
should have gone so long undetected. 

In Franquelin's map of 1684, the colony is 
laid down in detail, the different villages lo- 
cated and the number of warriors in each vil- 
lage noted — all this information having been 

(1) Parkman, La Salle, 297. 
4 



50 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

given by La Salle himself who had reached 
Quebec on his way to France, the autumn be- 
fore the map was finished. On this map the 
Shawanoes are estimated at 200 warriors and 
the Illinois at 1200, the latter being doubtless 
greatly over-estimated. How now are the re- 
maining 2600 made up.' />>' //ic extremely 
simple device of eoiinting the same people twice. 
The Miamis are first located as one body and 
their numbers estimated at 1300. Then the 
different tribes into which the Miamis were 
divided' — the Ouiatenons or Weas, the 
Peanghichias or Piankeshaws, etc. — are sepa- 
rately located and their respective numbers 
assigned to each. 

The trick is incredibly transparent. And 
there are other misstatements not quite so 
manifest. Only a part of the Miamis could 
have been with the colony, since a large body 
of them, including their king, were with the 
Mascoutins, at first on Fox river and then on 
the Wisconsin, from 1669 to 1690.^ Their 
numbers are also exaggerated; since in 1736 
— they having enjoyed peace and prosperity in 
the meantime — the whole nation was estimated 



(1) Consult Shea. Indian Tribes of Wisconsin, Wis. 
HiM. Coll., Ill, 1.34, on divisions of Miamis. 

(2) Relation, 1671. La Potlierie, II, 251. 



LA SALLE— COUREURS DE BOIS. 51 

at 550 warriors.' Again, the Illinois had long 
dwelt around Rock St. Louis, and La Salle, 
instead of collecting them there, had merely 
established his fort in their midst. In a word, 
a fraction of the Miamis and possibly two 
hundred Shawanoes — in all, perhaps seven 
hundred warriors- — had temporarily located in 
the Illinois country. And this had been 
brought about not by La Salle's diplomacy, but 
by fear of an Iroquois invasion. 

That such a. trick should not have been de- 
tected in far-away Paris is not surprising; al- 
though it does almost take away one's breath to 
find La Salle; coolly proposing, in a memorial 
to the king, to lead his four thousand imagin- 
ary Indians from Rock St. Louis to Mexico, 
promising with them to overthrow the Span- 
iards and to conquer an empire as large as half 
of Europe. "" But it is wonderful that this fraud 
should have lived on for two centuries, that 
an eminent historian should have accepted it 
without suspicion and made it the chief factor 
in that preposterous glory which he was 
bent upon wreathing around the brow of La 
Salle. History holds few such examples of 
triumphant mendacity. 

(1) Enumeration of Indian Tribes N. York Col. Docu- 
ments, IX, 1052. But this is a very low estimate. 

(2) Parkman, La Salle, 326. 



52 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

La Salle's enterprise, although but a bubble 
of fraud, exerted a very malign influence by- 
arousing the suspicions of the large Indian 
population massed in Wisconsin. Even before 
this the Foxes had become distrustful of the 
French; but now the eyes of the Mascoutins 
were opened and upon La Salle's first arrival 
among the Illinois in 1680, they sent their chief 
Monso to warn the latter people against the en- 
croachments of the French." La Salle, as 
usual, ascribed this interference to the intrigues 
of the Jesuit missionaries; with how much truth 
it would be difficult to say. But it is certain 
that f4om this time the two chief tribes of Wis- 
consin, the Foxes and Mascoutins, together 
with the Kickapoos became firm allies, united 
by a common sentiment of distrust and latent 
animosity toward the French. 

Hut this rising distrust of the savages did not 
prevent large numbers of French traders or 
coiirctn-i dc bois from pressing forward into 
Wisconsin and other northern regions. These 
brave and hardy men were exposed to a double 
danger, the suspicions of the savages and the 
regulations of the fur trade. For, the royal 
edicts, in the interests of monopoly, prohibited 

(1) IhUl., 161-4. 



LA SALLE— COUREURS DE BOIS. 



53 



the colonists from going into the wilderness to 
trade, under the heaviest penalties; for the first 
offense, whipping and branding; for the second 
perpetual imprisonment in the galleys.' But 
despite these severities and perils the flight 
westward went on year by year, in ever in- 
creasing numbers. As early as 1676, there 
were already in the woods nearly five hundred 
young men, ' ' the best in Canada, besides others 
on the way."° Three years later there were 
eight hundred out of a total Canadian popula- 
tion of 10,000 souls. Canada was being rap- 
idly drained of its best young blood. "There 
is not a family," the intendant Du Chesnau, 
wrote "of any condition or quality, whatso- 
ever, that has not children, brothers, uncles 
and nephews among the coureiirs dc bois."^ 

Monopoly and despotism had made these 
men outlaws. But to accept outlawry under 
such conditions was an act of virtue and a 
proof of manhood. "The men," says a dis- 
tinguished authority,'' "who have been driven 

(1) I/eMredu iJot, 30. April, 1681. Coll.de Manuscripts, I, 
280. Also La Houtan, Voyages, I, 85-6. 

(2) La Chesnaye. Memoire sur le Canada. Coll. de 
Manuscripts, I, 255. In Margry, VI, 3, this memoir is 
wrongly dated. 

(3) New York Coll. Document8,IX, 140-152. 

(4) Campbell, Political History of Michigan, 14-15. 



54 HFSTORV OF WISCONSIN. 

to the forests by feudal oppressions and mo- 
nopolies have assuredly been possessed of many 
useful qualities which a better government 
could have turned to a great advantage." 

And as it was, they were of incalculable ser- 
vice to New France. The most faithful ser- 
vants of the crown confessed it, while deplor- 
ing the violation of the royal edicts. "No 
doubt," wrote Begon,' "the trade they carry on 
with the nations is advantageous to the colony. 
The ^"rench should carry to the savages all 
that they need lest they be attracted to 
the ICnglish, and thus the fur trade in Canada 
which is our main dependence would be ruined. 
The savages would also array themselves 
against us in the first war, as they always take 
the part of those with whom they trade. " 

The English were of the same opinion, and 
saw in these hardy voyageurs the chief pro- 
moters of French exploration and commerce. 
"We shall never be able to rancounter the 
French," wrote Livingston, the Indian commis- 
sioner of New York,- "except we have a nur- 
sery of bushlopers as well as they." It was 
manifcstl)' true. For lack of just such a class, 

(1) Sheldon, Early History of Michigan, 309-310. 

(2) Report of Journey io Onondmja, N. Y. Col. Docu- 
ments, IV, 650. 



LA SALLE— COUREURS DE BOIS. 55 

the English even in 1750, had hardly found their 
way across the Alleghanies, while the French 
had pushed on to the base of the Rocky Mount- 
ains. ' 

And yet these forest rangers have been 
savagely traduced even in modern times. The 
same eloquent historian who has clothed the 
sorry figure of La Salle in a halo of romance, 
describes the coiircurs dc hois as "standing 
examples of unbridled license, " and as, ' 'drunk- 
en rioters stalking about the streets as naked 
as a Pottawattamie or a Sioux." Doubtless 
there were wild spirits among so many men; 
but La Hontan, an eye-witness, does not paint 
their revelries in any such gross colors as the 
above; and he expressly adds that "many 
were married men who on reaching the settle- 
ments betook themselves quietly and soberly 
to the bosom of their families." The great 
fault of these men was that the}' had rendered 
themselves odious to the aristocrats and mon- 
opolists of Canada. "They swagger about 
like lords," complains the Marquis Denonville, 
"they despise the peasantry whose daughters 
they will not marry although they are peasants 

(1) Harrisse, Notes sitr la Nouvelle France, 174 — a 
generous tribute to the forest rangers. 
( ) Parkman, La Salle, 166 and Old Regime, .312. 
( ) Voyages, I, HI. Letter VI. Montreal, 14 Juin, 1684. 



56 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

themselves." The French voyagers had, 
doubtless, many faults; their lives were 
thoroughly human admixtures of good and 
evil. But after all their chief crime seems to 
have been their love of liberty. 

A bitter strife constantly went on between 
these out-lawed fur traders of the forest and 
men like La Salle, who were acting as secret 
agents of corrupt official rings that were striv- 
ing to monopolize the trade of the West.' In 
this strife Wisconsin became the headquarters 
of the forest rangers, to whom the missionaries 
at Green Bay gave as much sympathy and sup- 
port as they dared. Thus during the French 
dominion, the white population of Wisconsin 
came to be mainly made up of these gay and 
daring adventurers. "" But all in all, the state 
need not be ashamed of these, her early pio- 
neers. 

(1) Gravier, Cavelier de La Salle, 75-77. This French 
panegyrist of La Salle describes his troubles and the rigors 
dealt out to the forest rangers as both due to the Jesuits. 

(2) Mackinac was indeed their great rendezvous, but 
this was but the gateway to Wisconsin. La Motte Cadillac 
complained that his designs at Detroit were constantly 
thwarted by the opposition of the Jesuits and " of the 
people of Canada, because their great project is the estab- 
lishment of Mackinac and the coureurs de hois." Also, 
Lettre a Pontehartrain, Detroit, Sept. 15, 1708. 



CHAPTER IV. 

NICOLAS PERROT — FRANCE TAKES POSSESSION 

OF THE WEST. 

1689. 

Small craft glide gaily into port while great 
ships have to wait for the rising tide. And 
thus it seems often to happen that small men 
sweep into distinction, while the great and the 
true stick on the sand-bars of history and have 
to bide their time. Only thus can one account 
for that strangely blended fate of oblivion and 
dishonor that has gathered around the name 
of Nicolas Perrot. And it is the chief joy of 
the historian — the full and almost sole reward 
for much delving in the dry and dusty records 
of the past, — if he may be able to help one 
such name onward into the place of honor 
where it really belongs, 

Perrot, born in 1644, came at a very early 
age to the New World. The first years of his 
wilderness career were passed in the employ 
of the Jesuits; but about 1665, he began life 
for himself as a trader among the Indian tribes 
of Wisconsin. Thence he soon extended his 
travels throughout the Northwest. 



5! 



HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 



In 1670, the French authorities determined 
to take formal possession of the West, with 
solemn and imposing ceremonies. They looked 
around for some one fitted, by his prestige 
among the Indians, to go as an envoy and 
gather the tribes in a grand assembly at Sault 
St. Marie, where the ceremonies of occupation 
were to take place. ' ' ' No one, " writes Charle- 
voix, "was" better adapted for this import- 
ant duty than Nicholas Perrot;"- and he was 
sent. After dispatching messages to the tribes 
north of Lake Superior, he went in person to 
those of Wisconsin. His visit was crowned 
with success; and the next spring the young 
envoy returned to Sault Ste Marie at the head 
of a great fleet of canoes filled with the guile- 
less barbarians who had come to surrender their 
land to the crown of France. When the as- 
sembly was convened, St. Lusson — a non- 
entity of noble birth — acted as master of cere- 
monies; but Perrot had done the real work. 

It is worthy of note that the proud Foxes 
were not at the council. They had a great 
friendship for Perrot and followed him as far 
as Green Bay, but there they turned back. 

(1) Perrot, Moeura dea Sauvages. Tailhan's Notes, 
258. 

(2) History of New France, III, 165. 



NICOLAS PERROT. 59 

Not even he could persuade them to pay 
homage to the French.' 

Soon afterward Frontenac, the monopolist 
and the fierce foe of the Jesuits, was made 
governor of New France, Under such an ad- 
ministration there was no chance for Perrot, 
an honest man and — like all the great explor- 
ers, Nicolet, Radisson, Joliet" — a friend of the 
missionaries. During this period, therefore, 
Perrot lived in retirement. 

But this blameless obscurity has given the 
opportunity for a frightful stab at Perrot's 
fame. The anonymous memoir which contains 
the lying account of La Salle's discoveries, 
also tells of an alleged attempt to poison him by 
a domestic in his service named Nicolas Perrot. 

Even if it was declared that our famous 
voyageur w'as meant, the charge would not 
deserve serious attention; since it would 
have no support except an anonymous doc- 
ument full of falsehoods and calumnies. But 
no such declaration is made. It has been 
reserved for a modern historian to give cur- 
rency to the charge.^ And so far as I know 

(1) Perrot, Memoire, 127. (2) Voyages of Radissori, 
175. A heai-ty defence of the Jesuits. 

(3) Parkman, La Salle, 104. Even that acute critic. Dr. 
Butler, expresses himself doubtfully. Wis. Hist. Coll., 
VIII, 205-fi.. 



6o HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

no attempt has ever been made to clear Perrot 
frorp the infamy thus cast upon him. 

Thanks to a Canadian census Hst, we know 
something of Perrot at this period. It thus 
appears that about 1671, he married Made- 
leine Raclos, a young lady of good family and 
possessed of a considerable fortune; in 1681, 
he was living quietly, with his wife and six 
children, upon his estate.' Is it not absurd to 
think of him as La Salle's menial and a cut- 
throat to boot, who had been put in irons and 
publicly disgraced for having attempted to 
poison his master.'' 

In 1683 the friends of Perrot returned to 
power and he was forthwith sent West to 
gather up the Indians for a campaign against 
the Iroquois. In 1685, he was made governor 
of the Northwest with headquarters at Green 
Bay. "I was sent to this Bay, "he writes," 
with a commission to command there and in 
the most distant countries of the West, and 
also in all those I might be able to discover. " = 
He arrived at Green Bay just in time to medi- 
ate between the Chippewas and the Foxes, 
then on the eve of war; thence he hastened to 
the Mississippi to establish posts and make 

(1) Tailhan in Perrot, Memoire, 331. Note. 

(2) Ibid., 156. 



NICOLAS PERROT. 6 1 

explorations in the countries beyond. But he 
had hardly reached Black River before winter 
set in. And here Perrot, who had an artist's 
eye for the picturesque, fixed his habitation 
not far from Mount Trempeleau, that solitary 
peak which rises like a rocky exhalation from 
the midst of the Mississippi. 

The next season Perrot was recalled to again 
lead his Indians against the Iroquois. Before 
setting out on this campaign he presented to 
the little mission chapel at De Pere, a silver 
ostensorium — the pious offering of a brave and 
devout soul. This precious relic was dug up 
in 1802 near the site of the old chapel, and is 
now deposited with the Wisconsin Historical 
Society.' 

The campaign finished, Perrot hastened back 
to Green Bay, where there was urgent need of 
his presence. The long smouldering discon- 
tent of the Foxes and their allies was now 
bursting forth into open violence against the 
French. They were enraged by the establish- 
ment of the trading posts on the Mississippi 
by which their mortal enemies, the Sioux, were 
being supplied with munitions of war. Besides, 
they had suffered all manner of abuse and 
wrongs from the hands of the traders, as the 

(]) ButXev, Early Historic Relics of the Northwest. Wis. 
Hist. Coll., VIII, 195-206. 



62 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

colonial authorities confessed. "The violence 
and brutality of the French have been carried 
to such extremes," Denonville, the governor- 
general, wrote in 1686, "that it is a wonder 
that the savages do not rise and slay them 
all."' 

The malign influence of La Salle also, had 
greatly aggravated these disorders. Claiming 
almost everything in the West, he had faltered 
at nothing in order to enforce his mad preten- 
sions. " He had even ordered the savages," 
Charlevoix says,' "to plunder the goods of any 
one who had no commission from him." Out 
of this chaos of conflicting claims, violence 
and iniquity, came a natural result. In 1687 
the Foxes, Kickapoos and Mascoutins con- 
spired to pillage the French establishment at 
Green Bay in order to provide themselves with 
guns and other munitions of war. The plot 
was carried out, the mission chapel burned, 
everything valuable was carried off or de- 
stroyed. 

Perrot was the chief sufferer. For his pub- 
lie services he had neither received nor ex- 
pected any reward save the profits of his trade 
with the Indians. And, like all the merchants 

(1) Lettre a Seicinelay;\2Juin, 1086. Tailhan, 312. 

(2) History of New France, III, 24(5. 



NICOLAS PEBROT. 63 

of the colony, ' he had for several years been 
greatly embarrassed on account of the Iroquois 
wars, which had prevented the carrying of furs 
to Montreal. A letter of his to one of his cred- 
itors has been preserved, the letter of an hon- 
est, high-minded man who struggles and hopes. 
But his goods were stored in the mission build- 
ings at Green Bay; and now all had vanished in 
smoke and flame. According to Potherie" "M. 
Perrot lost furs valued at forty thousand livres, " 
a considerable fortune in those primitive times. 
After so many hardships and perils, and so 
mnny services rendered to the state, he was 
left penniless and in debt. 

But the courage and serenity of Perrot were 
unfailing. Soon turning away from this scene 
of desolation, he hurried on to the Mississippi 
with a force of forty men. Winter was already 
at hand and ice had begun to form in Fox 
river. But daunted by nothing, he pushed 
forward until he reached Mount Trempeleau 
and there once more went into winter quarters. 

The next season was a busy and prosperous 
one. Order was restored amonsf the rebellious 



(1) "Les marchancls sont encore dans un e'tat plus de'- 
plorable tout leur bien est dans le bois depuis trois ou 
quatre ans." Letter of Champigny, Iniendant of New 
France, August 9, lfi88. 

(2) La Potherie, Septentrionale Amerique, II, 209. 



64 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

tribes of Wisconsin. The Sioux were induced 
to move down from the north and fix their 
habitation around Lake Pepin. Fort St. An- 
toine was built on the eastern side of the lake, 
and a tributary post established near the mouth 
of the Wisconsin, where one Borie Guillot was 
placed in command. All the tribes being now 
at peace with each other and thorougly loyal 
to France, everything had been prepared for 
the ceremony of occupation. And on the 9th 
of May, 1689, at Fort St. Antoine, Perrot, as 
commissioner for the king, formally took pos- 
session of the great Northwest. 

Let us pause for a moment at the spot where 
this memorable ceremony was enacted. The 
site of Fort St. Antoine can be identified with 
sufficient certainty, as lying near the base of a 
lofty bluff on the eastern side of Lake Pepin, 
and about two miles below the present village 
of Stockholm.' In the rear the bluff rises pre- 
cipitously, first covered with woods, then bare 
and sprinkled with black-mottled rocks, then 
its summit crowned with stately trees. In 
front, there is a gentle slope of fifty or sixty 
feet to the side of the lake. Then the clear 

(1) Draper, Early French Forts. Wis. Hist. Coll., X, 
368-372. 



NICOLAS PERROT. 65 

and wide expanse of the waters walled in on the 
other side by another long line of lofty cliffs, 
steep, grim, regular as a rampart. It is a 
scene of marvelous beauty; above all, in mid- 
summer, when one looking across the silvery 
waters, beholds the gray top of the distant 
bluffs, flecked here and there by streaks of 
gold, where the great sun-burned harvest fields 
beyond are peeping down on the fair lake be- 
neath. 

Such is the setting of the scene. Of the 
ceremony of taking possession we have no re- 
cord save the brief official minute signed by 
Nicolas Perrot, "commissioned to manage the 
interests of commerce among all the Indian 
tribes and peoples of the Bay des Puants, 
Nadouesioux, Mascoutins, and other Western 
nations of the Upper Misssisippi, and to take 
possession in the King's name of all the places 
where he has heretofore been and whither he 
will go.'" There are also subscribed to the 
document the names of Marest the Jesuit mis- 
sionary, Borie-Guillot commandant on the 
Wisconsin, Le Sueur the afterwards noted ex- 
plorer, and others less known to fame. 
Among the latter is one Jean He bert, doubt- 

(1) Wis. Hist. Coll., XI, 36. 

5 



66 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

less a scion of that Hebert family who were 
the first actual settlers of New France. ' 

Whole chapters of history have been de- 
voted to describing the pomp with which St. 
Lusson took possession for France of the rocky 
barrens around Sault Ste Marie and La Salle 
of the marshes which embosom the mouth of 
the Mississippi. But to the thoughtful mind, 
the quiet scene at Fort St. Antoine will far 
surpass them both in interest. St. Lusson and 
La Salle stood amidst uninhabited wastes, 
but Perrot, at Fort St. Antoine, stood at the 
centre of the continent, close to what were to 
be its richest gardens and harvest fields. The 
date itself was a memorable one. A few weeks 
before William and Mary had ascended the 
English throne and the English Revolution had 
thus been brought to its triumphant close. That 
date has been universally accepted as the turn- 
ing-point in the career of Louis XIV. and of 
European despotism. It seems like a stroke 
of supernatural irony that that very time should 
have been chosen for the planting of the stand- 
ard of this waning despotism in the heart of 
that continent which above all others had been 
reserved for liberty. 

(1) Parkman. Pioneers of New France. 



NICOLAS PERROT. 6/ 

In 1690, Perrot was once more in Quebec 
whence he returned to Wisconsin charged with 
high civil duties. He went as an envoy, with 
presents and messages, to the nations of the 
Northwest, seeking to dissuade them from the 
alliance which they were on the eve of con- 
cluding with the Iroquois and the English.' 

While employed upon this commission he 
discovered the lead mines which so long went 
by his name. Traveling on the Wisconsin, he 
was met by a delegation of Miamis who 
brought him presents of beaver skins and a 
specimen of lead ore from a rivulet flowing 
into the Mississippi; and in compliance with 
their request he soon after built a trading 
establishment across the river from the mines, 
probably not far from the site of Dunleith.'' 
Thence he hastened to Fort St. Antoine to 
mediate between the Sioux and the Wisconsin 
tribes, once more in a hostile mood; then back 
again to his new establishment among the 
Miamis. Next, he is heard of as commanding 
in Western Michigan, but soon returned to Wis- 
consin. ^ Thus year after year passed in an end- 
less round of private cares and public duties. 

(1) Collection de Manuscripts, Canada, III, 495. 

(2) La Potherie, II, 260. 

(3) Still, however, retaining his command in Michigan, 
according to Tailhan, 330. 



68 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

Life, for him, bristled with strange perils. 
As a mediator between warring tribes, he was 
always liable to fall a victim to the jealousies, 
the suspicions, the phrensy of the infuriated 
savages amidst whom he flung himself. In 
1692 the Mascoutins inveigled him into their 
town, robbed him of all his merchandise, con- 
demned him to death as a sorcerer and led him 
to "the place of fire;" but he escaped almost 
miraculously.' Four or five years later, the 
Miamis accused him of aiding their enemies, 
robbed him of everything, bound him to the 
stake, from which at the last moment he was 
rescued by his ever faithful friends, the Foxes." 
Still Perrot clung to the wilderness, fascinated 
by its very perils and undesponding despite so 
many disasters. 

But in 1699 his career was summarily closed. 
The king issued an order absolutely suppress- 
ing all licenses, commanding the evacuation of 
the Western posts and recalling all traders and 
soldiers to the St. Lawrence. This sweeping 
proclamation was a death blow to the hopes of 
Perrot. Shut out from the employment of his 
life-time, without resources, harassed by his 
creditors, he was condemned to an old age of 

(1) La Potherie, II, 284-6. 

(2) Letlre de Frontenac, 1.") Sept., 1697, 331. Also La 
Potherie, II, 343, and Charlevoix. 



NICOLAS PEBROT. 69 

poverty and humiliation. In vain the colonial 
authorities appealed to the king in his behalf. 
"He is very poor and very miserable," wrote 
Callieres, the governor; ' "large sums are justly 
due him for his services to the colony. " But 
such homely virtues as justice and gratitude 
did not thrive amidst the splendid vanities of 
Versailles. 

The savages, however, although they did not 
love their enemies, never forgot a friend. In 
the great council of the Indian tribes held at 
Montreal in 1701, the Foxes complained bit- 
terly about the removal of Perrot; "we have no 
more sense," said the honest savages, "since 
he has left us."- The Ottawas for once were 
agreed with the Foxes and earnestly re-echoed 
the demand for his return.^ "He is the most 
highly esteemed," declared the grand chief of 
the Pottawattamies, ' ' of all the Frenchmen that 
have ever been among us."'' 

Nevertheless, this tried servant of the crown 
languished in neglect and poverty. During 
these years of inaction he wrote his Memoir 
upon the Indians and other works — not in the 
highest style of literary art, but keen and 

(1) Lettre de Callieres, 1702. 

(2) Charlevoix, V, 144. Tailhan, 267. 

(3) lUd., V, 153. La Potherie, IV, 257. 

(4) La Potherie, IV, 213. 



70 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

honest — the best original sources for the his- 
tory of the French Rule in the West, especially 
in Wisconsin, during the latter part of the 17th 
Century. 'His last work was a memoir addressed 
to the colonial authorities, about 1716. It was 
an appeal, not for himself, but for a wiser and 
humaner treatment of his old friends, the 
Foxes, then just beginning that tremendous re- 
volt which was to prove so disastrous to the 
French Dominion. With this kindly and 
characteristic act, the bowed figure of Perrot 
vanishes from the dimly lighted stage of West- 
ern History. 

The withdrawal of the garrisons and traders 
from the West at the close of the century does 
not indicate any feeling of weakness on the 
part of the French, but rather of strength. 
Universal peace was now dawning, and the 
time seemed ripe for thoroughly carrying out 
what had always been the favorite policy of 
the French government. The trade of the 
Northwest was to be concentrated at Montreal. 
A few tribes, that had fully proved their docil- 
ity and submissiveness, were to be installed as 
middlemen between the French and the more 
independent nations of the interior. Chief 
among these intermediaries were to be the 



NICOLAS PERROT. 



71 



Hurons, Ottawas, Pottawattamies and Chippe- 
was — all people that had been ground into 
subjection by exile, misery and constant con- 
tact with the whites. The first three tribes 
named have already been sufficiently noticed, 
the last demands a moment's attention. 

The Chippewas, according to their own tra- 
ditions, had dwelt in Northern Wisconsin for 
ages before the coming of the white man. We 
cannot stop to tell the strange story of their 
flight eastward; suffice it that about 1640, the 
French found them crouching around Sault Ste. 
Marie whither they had been pursued by the 
Sioux.' In the next decade, as we have seen, 
the Hurons and Ottawas, fleeing from the wrath 
of the Iroquois, had sought an asylum in these 
deserted Wisconsin forests, but they too, were 
finally put to flight by the Sioux. Then the 
exiled Chippewas began to creep back to their 
old homes; as early as 1676, some of them 
were settled on Chequamegon Bay;^ and before 
many years the most of the nation had return- 
ed, building their council-house and relighting 
their sacred fire at Madeleine Island.^ For a 

(1) Margry, I, 46. 

(2) Memoire sur le Canada. Collection de Manuscripts, 
I, 252. 

(3) Bronson. Early History of Wisconsin. Wis. Hist. 
Coll., IV, 232. 



72 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

time there was much warfare with the Sioux, 
but finally the interests of trade prevailed over 
hereditary hate;' about 1695, ^ firm friendship 
was established between the two nations;" and 
henceforth the Chippewas prospered abund- 
antly as brokers for the savage multitude be- 
yond the Mississippi. 

The commerce which thus united the French 
and the Indians had its main-spring in the 
eagerness of the latter for guns and amunition. 
The savages saw — ^what our modern historians 
have strangely failed to see — that their 
strength, their ability to cope with their rivals, 
their very existence depended upon their pos- 
session of the white man's weapons. 

History and romance have united to exalt 
the Iroquois, for instance, above all other 
American savages. The Iroquois, we are told, 
were wiser and braver than the rest; their po- 
litical organization was of a higher type; their 
skulls, it is gravely asserted,^ had a greater 
admeasurement. It is an old fault of this 
giddy world to thus mistake luck for merit. 

(1) Warren. History of the Ojibways. Minn. Hist. Coll., 
Y, 16:5-7. 

(2) New York Col. Documents, IX., 609. Le Sueur, to 
promote this peace, was sent to build a fort on tlie Mis- 
sissippi above Lake Pepin. 

(3) Parkman. Jenuit MisnionH. Introduction. 



NICOLAS PERROT. 



73 



The fact is that the Iroquois had been driven 
from their old homes on the St. Lawrence' by 
the superior prowess of the Algonquin tribes.^ 
In the latter part of the sixteenth century, they 
fled to New York and there they were soon 
lavishly supplied with guns by the careless and 
irresponsible Dutch traders at Albany. ^ The 
French, on the contrary, for a long time re- 
fused to furnish guns to their Algonquin and 
Huron allies;" and so the Iroquois soon rose 
from the role of refugees to that of conquerors 
over other races as yet unarmed. Thus fully 
equipped for battle they easily crushed the 
Hurons whom the frugal French had supplied 
with hardly anything but iron kettles and mis- 
sionaries. Almost without an effort the Iro- 

(1) Hale. Book of Iroquois Rites, 10. Also Le Jeune, 
Relation, 1636. "Les sauvages m'oiit montre quelques 
endroits ou les Iroquois ont autrefois cultive la terre.'' 
Also, La Chernage, Ferland, Suite, etc. 

(2) "La superiorite des Algon quins se manifesta des les 
premieres rencontres," etc. Suite, Melanges d Histoire, 
190. 

(3) Journal of Netv Netherlands. N. Y. Col. Docs., I, 
179. The Dutch supplied the Mohawks alone with 400 
guns. Also, Parknian, Jesuits, 212. 

(4) Ferland, Cours d'Histoire du Canada. "LeFran- 
cais enterent pendant longteraps de fournir des fusils a 
leur aUies." Memoire, 1676, in Coll. de Manuscripts, I, 
254. " Le grand nombre (Algonquins) ne fut arme que de 
fort longtemps apres que les HoUandois eurent arme les 
Iroquois." 



74 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

quois also annihilated the defenseless Eries; but 
for a long time they were defied by a mere 
handful of the Andastes who had been armed 
by the Swedes of Delaware. The Illinois 
fought with bows and arrows; and of course, 
they were driven before the armed Iroquois 
like chaff before the wind. And so everywhere 
it was bullets, not excess of brains or of brav- 
ery that made the Iroquois triumphant. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE BETRAYAL OF THE FOXES. 
I 700-1 71 2 

When the eighteenth century opened, the 
French Empire in America was at the flood- 
tide of its prosperity. But let us be sure that 
we understand the policy upon which that 
prosperity was based. The French did not de- 
sign to make settlements in the West. The 
few forts were slightly garrisoned, and hardly 
more than palisaded trading posts; nothing 
was permitted that might awaken the jealousy 
of the Indians. The savages were to be left in 
undisturbed possession of the whole vast do- 
main, on condition that they allowed the 
French to control the continent and to monop- 
olize its trade. 

' ' France, " wrote the English governor of Can- 
da, Sir GuyCarleton, in 1768, "did not depend 
on the number of her troops, but on the discretion 
of officers who learned the language of the na- 
tives, * * * distributed the king's presents, 
excited no jealousy and gained the affections of 
an ignorant, credulous but brave people, whose 
ruling passions are independence, gratitude 



76 HISTORY OF WISCONSIX. 

and revenge.'" It was a wise policy and had 
been crowned with signal success. At the be- 
ginning of the century the Indian nations were 
at peace with each other and with France. 
Even the Iroquois, who for more than eighty 
years had nursed the fiercest hatred of the 
French, were at last reconciled and henceforth 
maintained an unquiet neutrality in the great 
struggle for the possession of the continent. The 
destiny of America seemed already decided. 
Protestant England held a narrow strip along 
the Atlantic coast, but the lilies of France 
floated without opposition over the entire ex- 
panse from Quebec to the mouth of ihe Missis- 
sippi and from the Alleghanies almost to the 
base of the Rocky Mountains. 

But already there were the mutterings of a 
distant storm along the horizon. The curse of 
Canada was the spirit of monopoly. The com- 
merce of the colony was at the mercy of a vast 
trading corporation; the bold, enterprising 
courcurs dc bois, despite their great services to 
the crown, were hunted down as outlaws; cor- 
rupt rings formed by the chief ofificials at Que- 
bec added the burden of their rapacity and ex- 
tortion; above all, because the same system of 



(1) Report to Lord Shelbume, March 2, 1768 in Cana- 
dian Archives, 1887. 



THE BETRAYAL OF THE FOXES. 



77 



monopoly and restriction prevailed throughout 
France, the prices of French merchandise were 
ruinously high. The consequence was that 
the English traders, less absurdly fettered, could 
offer the Indians three or four times more for 
their furs than the French could. One beaver 
skin, according to a French memoir of 1689, 
would buy at Albany eight pounds of gun- 
powder, at Montreal only two; or forty pounds 
of lead at the one place against thirteen at the 
other; or six times as much of the indispensable 
brandy, and other goods in similar propor- 
tions.' 

The savages were not slow to discover this 
difference, and they began to chafe under the 
yoke of French monopoly and extortion. Even 
those humblest vassals of France, the Ottawas, 
became restless; and Perrot says that they 
were at heart traitors to the crown. = The dis- 
content spread. In 1706 M. de Vaudreuil, 
Governor General of New France, declared 
that the cheapness of English goods was the 
Gordian knot and chief difficulty in all the In- 
dian troubles. "The English," he writes 
mournfully, "give powder and lead exceeding- 
ly low. The French government must some- 

(1) Collection de Manuscripts, I, 476. 

(2) Ferrot, Memoire, Notes, 314. 



78 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

how manage to do the same or all will be 
lost." 

But the French held all the avenues of trade; 
they managed their savage vassals with infinite 
address; the most skillful politicians in the 
world, they humored the weakness and gained 
the favor of the people whom they were bent 
upon plundering, and whatever discontent was 
felt by the Indians went no further than mut- 
tered complaints and occasional outbursts of 
childish fury. One nation, however, — the 
Foxes of Wisconsin — was an exception. Their 
discontent flamed into a resistance whch grew 
all the fiercer amidst the most frightful calami- 
ties and distresses. And this fire of Fox re- 
sistance did not burn itself out until the 
French empire in the west had become a mere 
shell, ready to fall into ruins. 

It has been customary to explain the enmity 
of the Foxes against the French as excited by 
the machinations of the Fnglish and the Iro- 
quois; but the facts do not in the least support 
this theory. The resentment began, as we 
have seen, with their first meeting with the 
French, and at a time when they, like all the 
western nations, were at war with the Iroquois. 
It continued — and in fact did not rise into its 
fiercest fury — until long after the Iroquois had 



THE BETRAYAL OF THE FOXES. 



79 



made peace with the French. It was a hatred 
spontaneously springing up in the breasts of a 
people passionately fond of independence and 
wise enough to foresee the results of French 
domination. Other Algonquin nations — Hu- 
rons Ottawas, Illinois, etc. — cowed and 
crushed by the Iroquois and their guns, had 
flung themselves under the protection of the 
French; the Foxes, on the contrary, haughty 
and untamed, had received them at first with 
suspicion and dislike, at last with undying ha- 
tred. 

So early as 1694, the French were made 
aware that the Foxes were secretly hostile. 
In that year, Perrot, with ten or twelve ca- 
noes filled with deputies from the different 
Wisconsin tribes, made the long journey to 
Montreal to have an interview with the govern- 
or. Fox deputies were with the rest, but as if 
feeling that they were distrusted, they had en- 
gaged a Pottawattamie chief to speak for them 
in the council. But this very chief after- 
wards came privately to the governor and de- 
nounced his clients. "Put no faith," said he 
"in the Foxes. They are a proud people; 
They despise the French and all other nations 
also; they have a bad heart, and the Mascou- 
tins have a still worse heart than they." Oth- 



8o HISTORY OF WISCONSIX. 

ers gave the same warning. Last spring, so 
Frontenac was told, the Foxes had some Iro- 
quois prisoners presented to them by the Otta- 
was, but they had spared the captives to use 
them in negotiating with the enemy. 

Frontenac was also informed that the Foxes 
were planning a singular and suspicious enter- 
prise. They had resolved to forsake their 
country. Already through fear of a Sioux inva- 
sion, they had left their villages and dispersed 
far and wide through the forests. But they 
expected to return after a while to secure their 
harvests. Then they would seek a new home 
on the banks of the Wabash or the Ohio. 

Frontenac felt that this was indeed a grave 
peril. The Foxes, he wrote to the king, are a 
fierce and discontented people in secret alliance 
with the English. If they remove to the Wa- 
bash with their afifiliated tribes, the Kickapoos 
and Mascoutins, they will form there a nation 
of 1 500 warriors. Far away from their ene- 
mies the Sioux, and in close contact with their 
Iroquois and English allies, they will prosper 
as never before. Other Indian malcontents 
will gather around them. They will become 
a great people holding the key to the valley of 
the Mississippi. The fur-trade will pass into 
the hands of the English, and French suprem- 
acy in the West will be at an end. 



THE BETRAYAL OF THE FOXES. gl 

The Foxes, for reasons not necessary to 
dwell upon, put aside at that time their pro- 
ject of ennigration eastward. But eighteen 
years afterward the plan was revived and car 
ried into execution. In the meantime the 
French, in order to shut the English out from 
the Upper Lakes, had established a fort at 
Detroit, and around it they had induced their 
ever faithful vassals, the Fottawattamies, the 
Hurons and a part of the Ottawas to settle. 
And in the year 171 2, the Foxes, Mascoutins, 
Kickapoos, and a part of the Sauks, forsaking 
their land of beauty and abundance along the 
Fox river, wended their way to the new estab- 
lishment on Detroit river. 

The French ofificial reports pretend that the 
Wisconsin Indians, being in secret alliance 
with the Iroquois and the English had come to 
Detroit with the express purpose of besieging 
the fort and reducing it to ruins; and their 
statement has heretofore been unsuspectingly 
accepted by all historians.' But there is httle 
doubt that the charge is a shameful falsehood. 
The Fox Indians had rendered themselves very 
obnoxious to the French. Firmly lodged on 



(1) Bancroft, II, 383. Smith, Hisionj of Wisconsin, 91. 
Laiiman. History of Michigan, 42. Strong, Wisconsin 
Hisl. Collections, VIII, 242. 
6 



82 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

the Fox River they controlled the chief high- 
way to the West; a haughty, independent and 
intractable people, they could not be cajoled 
into vassalage. It was necessary for the suc- 
cess of the French policy to get them out of 
the way. They were enticed to Detroit in 
order that they might be slaughtered. 

The proof seems direct and conclusive. In 
the Collection de Manuscripts relatifs a la Nou- 
velle France published recently by the Cana- 
dian government, it is declared that La Motte 
Cadillac, the first commandant at Detroit, 
"wishing to draw the commerce of all the 
nations to his post, had sent belts to the Mas- 
coutins and Kickapoos to invite them to settle 
there and that they having accepted the offer, 
came and built a fort at the place which had 
been assigned them." The Memoir containing 
this is contemporaneous with the events and 
of high authority. ' 

Father Marest, Jesuit missionary, in a letter 
to the Governor General, De Vaudreuil, dated 
June 21, 1 71 2, states that the French were the 
first movers in the war, having joined with the 
Ottawas to destroy the Foxes. This is the 
declaration of an unprejudiced witness, writing 
in a semi-oflficial way to the very man who, 

(1) Coll. de Manuscripts, III, 622, seq. 



THE BETRAYAL OF THE FOXES. 83 

above all others, would know the truth or fal- 
sity of the charge.' 

Even the official report of Du Buisson, tem- 
porarily commanding at Detroit during the 
siege, contains statements strangely over- 
looked, which disclose a plot to destroy the 
Wisconsin Indians. "The Indians said in the 
council," writes Du Buisson, "that they knew 
the desire of the governor to exterminate the 
Foxes." "And just as soon as the siege was 
over," he adds in another place, "the allies 
set out for Quebec to get the reward which 
they say, Sir, that you promised them."" 

Nor does the Governor General himself, pre- 
tend, in his despatches to the Colonial Minis- 
ter, that the Wisconsin Indians had come to 
Detroit with any hostile designs. On the con- 
trary, he lays the whole blame on the Indian 
allies of the French. "Saguima did it all. 
He not only destroyed many in their winter- 
ing place, but having found means to win over 
almost all the other tribes, pursued these unfor- 
tunate people as far as Detroit, and there killed 
or captured nearly a thousand of both sexes."' 

Finally: on the very face of the accounts of 

(1) Sheldon, Early History of Michigan, 299. 

(2) Smith, History of Wisconsin. 

(3) New York Coll. Doc.uments,IX, 863. 



84 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

the siege, given both by Du Buisson and Char- 
levoix, it is manifest that the Wisconsin In- 
dians had not come for war. They reached 
Detroit early in the spring; the Indian allies 
of the French did not arrive until the iith of 
May. During all the intervening time the fort 
was virtually defenseless, being garrisoned 
by only twenty Frenchmen. Then, if ever, 
would have been the time for the Foxes to 
have destroyed Detroit. But they waited 
tranquilly until Du Buisson, had had time to 
send forth runners as far as the Illinois river 
and even to the banks of the Missouri, to 
gather in his allies. When all had gathered 
the pretended siege of Detroit began. 

The French opened fire upon the unsuspect- 
ing Foxes. The latter, overwhelmed with 
surprise, cried out indignantly: "What does 
this mean.-* My father! You invited us a little 
while ago to come and settle around you and 
now you declare war against us. What have 
we done.-* But we are ready. Know ye that 
the Fox is immortal." And with this yell of 
defiance the betrayed savages retreated behind 
their palisades.' 

The valor of the Foxes was a terror to all. 

(1) Collection de Manuscripts relatifs a la Nouvelle 
France, III, 023. 



THE BETRA YAL OF THE FOKES. 8 5 

And although the French Indians were there 
in overwhelming numbers — Hurons, Ottawas, 
Pottawattamies, Illinois, even tribes from the 
Missouri and the Menominees from Wiscon- 
sin — they did not dare to attack the enemy 
in his stronghold. They preferred to fight at 
a safe distance, hoping to reduce the Foxes by 
famine and thirst. The battle went on for 
days. The French built two rough scaffolds 
about twenty-five feet high from which they 
poured such a galling fire day and night that the 
Foxes were cut off from their supply of water. 
Tormented by thirst and by hunger — for their 
provisions were almost exhausted — they were 
still as haughty and defiant as ever. To taunt 
the French, they raised rude flag-staffs above 
their camp and ran up red blankets as their 
colors, shouting: "We have no Father but 
the English." 

The French allies on their part, were zeal- 
ous for France and the Catholic faith. "The 
English," so they shouted back, " are cowards; 
they destroy the Indians with brandy and are 
enemies of the true God." It was a veritable 
crusade — a battle of religion against the im- 
pious Foxes, who had flung the red flag of Eng- 
land and heresy to the breeze. 



86 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

The Foxes, ready to perish with hunger and 
thirst, began to make desperate sorties. Once 
they swept all before them and gained a lodg- 
ment in a house near the fqrt where they forti- 
fied themselves; but the French cannon, at 
such close quarters, ploughed through and 
through the frail structure, and its defenders 
were finally forced to retire. Then they 
wished to negotiate; but their proposals not 
being listened to, they made another tremen- 
dous onslaught. This time they shot up hun- 
dreds of blazing arrows which fell upon the 
thatched roofs of the houses and set them on 
fire; the whole town and the fort would soon 
have been destroyed if the French had not 
checked the flames by covering the roofs with 
wet skins. Amid the smoke and flames the 
savages fought hand to hand, yelling like de- 
mons, their faces hideous with paint and fury, 
their tomahawks dripping with blood. 

At last the F'rench Indians became discour- 
aged and wished to go away. ' 'We shall never 
conquer these people," they said. "We know 
them well, and they are braver than any other 
people." 

Du Buisson, seeing himself about to be de- 
serted, prepared to sail away to Michillimack- 



THE BETRAYAL OF THE FOXES. 8/ 

inac. But before surrendering Detroit, he 
made one more effort; gathering his confeder- 
ates in council, he tried to revive their droop- 
ing courage; he appealed to their hatred of the 
Foxes and loaded them down with presents 
until he "had given away ev^erything he had.' 
But all this would have availed nothing if 
treachery had not come to his aid. A part of 
the Sauk tribe had come with the other Wis- 
consin Indians, and they now deserted to the 
French, telling a frightful story of what' was 
going on in the camp of the enemy. "The 
Foxes," they said, "are worn out with famine, 
sickness and constant fighting; great numbers 
have already fallen. More than eighty dead 
bodies are now lying unburied in the camp; 
the air is filled with a horrible stench; pesti- 
lence abounds." When the French Indians 
heard all this, their courage rose and they were 
eager for battle. The story of the deserters 
was too true. The unhappy Foxes had now 
lost all hope of successful resistance, and they 
soon raised the white flag of surrender. Pem- 
oussa, their great war chief, spoke like a genu- 
ine hero. "Do not believe," he said, "that I 
am afraid to die. It is the life of our women 
and children that I ask of you." But the 
French refused even this, and the Foxes, de- 



88 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

spairing but defiant, withdrew again into their 
entrenchments. 

Fortune came at last to their rescue. One 
night there was a heavy rain-storm, and under 
cover of its darkness, the Foxes slipped silent- 
ly away. The fight had lasted for nineteen 
days. 

Next morning, the French confederates 
baulked and furious, set out in hot pursuit. 
Twelve miles above Detroit they came up with 
one division of the Foxes who had encamped 
by the side of Lake St. Clair. "Not perceiving 
the enemy's entrenchments," the French ex- 
pected to find an easy prey, and with yells of 
triumph fell upon the fugitives like wolves up- 
on a flock of sheep. Being driven back in dis- 
order, they began a new siege with great cau- 
tion. The Foxes fought bravely, but hope- 
lessly; they were hemmed in upon every side, 
either by the lake or the enemy; the French 
cannon, which had been brought up from De- 
troit, battered down their weak defences and 
finally on the fifth day of the second siege they 
surrendered at discretion. 

No mercy was shown. "The allies and the 
French," writes' Charlevoix, "commenced a 
deadly slaughter, destroying all the warriors 
(1) Charlevoix, History of New France, V, 265. 



THE BETRAYAL OF THE FOXES. 89 

except about one hundred and fifty, who, with 
the women and children, were distributed as 
slaves among the Indians; but the latter did 
not keep them long for they were all 
massacred before they separated." The slain, 
according to the statements of Charlevoix and 
Ferland, numbered two thousand souls;' one 
thousand, according to the exculpatory and 
wholly unreliable report of Du Buisson, the 
French commander. Certain it is that not a 
man, woman or child who fell into the hands 
of the enemy was permitted to live.'' 

The dark annals of Indian history record no- 
thing quite as black as this transaction, begun 
in vile treachery and ending in unpicturable 
horrors. The lovely nights of early June, the 
tranquil lake, the forests newly robed in 
beauty — all this was lighted up by hundreds 
upon hundreds of fires, at each of which some 
man, woman or child, was being slowly burned 
to death. No wonder that the French were 
not willing to assume all the responsibility for 
this affair at Detroit. "It is God," writes the 
commandant, Du Buisson, "who has suffered 
these two audacious nations to perish." 

(1) Ferland, Courn d'Histoire du Canada, II, 388. 

(2) Report to M. de Vandreuil. Smith, Documentary 
History of Wisconsin. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE GAUNTLET TAKEN UP. 
1712 — 1716. 

But the Wisconsin Indians were by no means 
so nearly exterminated as the French authorities 
had fondly dreamed. ' ' Although the number of 
the dead is very great," wrote the missionary, 
Marest,' "the Fox nation is not destroyed." 
According to his estimate there still remained 
about Green Bay, four hundred good warriors, 
besides others scattered in the great flight. 
Nor had the slaughter at Detroit broken the 
spirit of these indomitable savages; it had only 
deepened their old dislike of the French into a 
grim, undying hatred. Even the next year 
the governor and the intendant complain to 
the Minister at Paris that "the Fox Indians 
are daily becoming more insolent. "- 

Disaster however had disciplined these wild 
warriors. Henceforth they will be more con- 
ciliatory in their intercourse with surrounding 

(1) Letter to M. (le Vaudreuil. Sheldon, Early History 
of Michigan, 299. 

(2) Letter of De Vaudreuil and Begon, Nov. 15, 1713. 
Abstract in Canadian Archives, 1886, p. xiiiv. 



THE GAUNTLET TAKEN UP. 



91 



nations, seeking far and wide for helpers and 
friends in the great struggle to which they had 
devoted themselves. The first fruits of their 
new policy was an alliance with the Sioux, 
with whom they had been at war from time 
immemorial. Rutin 17 14 the two nations had 
joined hands against the Illinois, the wards 
and abject servants of the French. No great 
expedition was organized; war was waged by 
piecemeal. Some young warrior, eager for 
glory, would gather around him a band of com- 
rades and sally forth out of the forests of North- 
ern Wisconsin, across the prairies, to surprise 
the Illinois in their villages or to fall upon 
them in their hunting parties. If the warriors 
succeeded, they came back in triumph, waving 
their trophies and shouting their battle songs; 
but if they failed, they returned as men dis- 
graced, waiting on the outskirts of the village 
until the dead of night and then stealing, silent 
and crestfallen, into their cabins.' But in either 
case the war went on. 

Thus blow after blow fell upon the Illinois. 
Charlevoix has indeed exaggerated or rather 
anticipated events when he says that so early 
as 1 7 14 these Indians were driven from their 
old homes on the Illinois river, never to return. = 

(1) Wisconsin Hist. Collections, III, 446! 

(2) History of New France, V. 309, 



92 



HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 



So late as 1722 one tribe still clung to their 
famous stronghold, Rock St. Louis; but the 
rest had fled far southward and had settled 
under French protection on the Kaskaskia. 

The French authorities became greatly 
alarmed. The policy by which all the nations 
of the West were to be marshalled as retainers 
and supporters of a great French Empire 
stretching across the continent, was about to 
be defeated by the stubborn and bitter hate 
of a single tribe. The Foxes were allying with 
themselves not only the tribes of Wisconsin, 
but the Sioux and other distant peoples. By 
their settlement on Fox river they were mas- 
ters of the chief channel of communication be- 
tween the East and the West; by driving the 
Illinois off from the river of the same name 
they were gaining almost complete control of 
the only other great highway. Communica- 
tions were becoming very difficult. Travellers 
to and fro were always at the mercy of the 
Foxes; many were plundered and killed. The 
vast but fragile Empire of New France was al- 
most split asunder by these implacable savages 
of Wisconsin. 

Various means of meeting this danger were 
suggested. It was even proposed to sweep 
away the old commercial system with its mo- 



THE GAUNTLET TAKEN UP. 



93 



nopolies, restrictions and exactions. In 1714 
the governor and the intendant of the colony 
wrote to the colonial minister that "trading 
must be made free for a few years at least,"' 
Such a policy, adopted, not for a few years, 
but permanently, would have changed the 
whole future of the colony; the rising discon- 
tent of the Indians would have been overcome; 
their affection for the French maintained. 
New France, already entrenched in the fairest 
portions of the West and commanding all its 
chief avenues of trade, would have entered 
upon a boundless prosperity and her supremacy 
over the continent been assured for ages to 
come. But the proposal was too revolutionary, 
too subversive of all the traditions of French 
despotism; and although suggested again and 
again, "^ met with little favor from the court. 

Instead of this, it was proposed to again at- 
tempt the extermination of the Foxes. In 
vain, the wisest and most experienced people 
of the colony protested against a policy so 
brutal and so foolish. Perrot, who for half a 

(1) De Vaudreuil and Begon to the Minister, Sept. 20, 
1714. Canadian Archives, 188G, xiiiv. 

(2) A letter of De Vaudreuil and Begon, Oct. U, 1716, 
contains a draft of proposed measures for freedom of trade 
— not to begin before Jan. 1, 1718. Can. Archives, 1886, 

XliVII. 



94 



HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 



century had been better versed than any other 
man in the affairs of the West, defended the 
Foxes and presented a memoir in their favor 
to the Governor General. Although now past 
seventy years of age, he offered to once more 
brave the hardships of the wilderness in order 
to treat wuth the savages who still had a per- 
fect trust in the one Frenchman who had never 
betrayed their confidence. "If I had gone 
wath De Louvigny," he said afterwards, "I 
would have made peace with the I'oxes with- 
out fighting or bloodshed."' 

But folly prevailed. And on the 14th of 
March, 17 16, an expedition led by a brave and 
tried officer, De Louvigny, set out from Que- 
bec to destroy the Foxes. On the route they 
were joined by allied Indians until the com- 
mand numbered eight hundred men. In due 
time they reached Green Bay, the first hostile 
expedition of white men that ever touched the 
shores of Wisconsin. 

Thence they toiled up the rapids of the Fox 
river until they came to the town of the Foxes 
which, according to tradition, was located at 
Little Butte des Morts, a slight eminence close 
to the west bank of the river and nearly oppo- 

(1) Perrot, Moeurs des Savages, 153. Also La Poth- 
erie. 



THE GAUNTLET TAKEN UP. 95 

site to the site of the city of Neenah.' Here 
the savages had fortified themselves in the 
rude way known to their engineering art, hav- 
ing run a triple row of oaken palisades arouud 
their town and in the rear dug a deep, wide 
ditch. Within the enclosure were five hundred 
warriors and three thousand women and child- 
ren. 

The Foxes at this time were in all the per- 
fection of savage wildness. Their dislike of 
the French had kept them free from the touch 
of civilized vices and miseries. The Jesuit 
missionaries noted the absence of sickness 
among them, having found on their first visit 
but one person seriously ill, a consumptive 
child." "They abound in women and child- 
ren," says a French Memoir of 171 8. "They 
are as industrious as can be. The people live 
well on account of the abundance of meat and 
fish. The hunting is excellent and the river 
is full of fish. The men wear scarcely any 
clothing in the summer time. . . . But 
the girls are robed in black or brown fawn 
skins, embellished all around with little bells 



(1) The Chicago &. Northwestern Kailway was laid out 
through tliis famous mound and almost the entire hill has 
been dug away. 

(2) Relation, 1671. 



96 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

or similar ornaments. They are pretty- 
enough."' 

Such were the savages who had gathered 
behind their oaken palisades to await the com- 
ing of De Louvigny and his destroying army. 
'•Everybody believed," writes Charlevoix,* 
"that the Fox nation was about to be de- 
stroyed; and so they themselves judged when 
they saw the storm gathering against them; 
they therefore prepared to sell their lives as 
dearly as possible." 

One can but dimly imagine the scene: 
thousands of men, women and children tran- 
quilly awaiting their doom; the busy prepa- 
rations for war, the few guns made ready, 
spears sharpened, the stone arrow-heads se- 
curely fast^^ned to their shafts; the council fires 
around v/hich the warriors crouched, row upon 
row, in solemn conclave; the long fastings, for 
the Foxes, very devout after their own fashion, 
would often fast ten days at a time on the eve 
of battle;^ their incessant war dances now slow 
and mea.sv.red, now growing fast and furious 
until the forests rang with their wild songs and 
cries of defiance. 

(1) N. Y. Col. Documents. Memoir upon the Indians of 
Canada, IX, 889. 

(2) Charlevoix, History of Neto France, IV, 155. 

(3) Relation, 1671. 



THE GAUNTLET TAKEN UP. 97 

The French, taught wisdom at Detroit, pro- 
ceeded with the utmost caution. Unwilling to 
risk an open assault against the redoubtable 
Foxes, they beseiged them in regular form. 
For three days the French toiled in the trench- 
es, "sustained by a continuous fire of fusileers 
with two pieces of cannon and a grenade mor- 
tar." The Foxes, on their part, fought with 
their wonted valor. From the first they had 
been expecting a re-inforcement of three hun- 
dred men, doubtless Mascoutins. Disappoint- 
ed and desperate they made a furious assault 
upon the enemy, but were finally driven back 
behind their palisades. 

The trenches which had opened at seventy 
yards distance, had been pushed forward to 
within twenty-four yards of the fort. On the 
third night, DeLouvigny was ready to explode 
two mines under the defenses and to storm the 
place. At the last moment the Foxes offered 
to surrender, but the French commander re- 
fused to listen to them. He had come not to 
negotiate, but to destroy. 

The deputies came forth a second time to 
sue for peace. Why DeLouvigny should now 
have acceded to their proposition is a mys- 
tery not worth the unravelling; perhaps he 
knew that the long expected reinforcements 



98 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

were close at hand; or very likely he doubted 
the nerve of his allies when brought face to 
face with the Foxes. At any rate, in his 
ofificial report he tried to throw the responsi- 
bility for the peace upon the allied Indians. 
•'I submitted to them the enemy's proposition 
and they consented to it." But this the French 
Indians indignantly denied. Five years after- 
ward an attempt was made to once more unite 
them in a crusade against the Foxes and they 
refused; " it is difficult," they said "to place 
confidence in the French who had once before 
united the nations to assist in exterminating 
the Foxes and then had granted peace without 
even consulting the allies."' 

The conditions of surrender were remarkably 
mild, showing plainly that something had gone 
wrong in the project of extermination. The 
Foxes were to give up their prisoners; they 
were to hunt to pay the expenses of the war; 
they were to take slaves from different nations 
and deliver them to the allies to replace the 
dead; six chiefs, or children of chiefs, were also 
to be taken to Quebec as hostages. Peace con- 
cluded, De Louvigny set out on his home- 
ward march, arriving at Quebec on the 1 2th of 
October. The next day he made a report to 

(1) Neic York Col. Documents, IX. 



THE GAUNTLET TAKEN UP. 99 

the council, ending with the boast that " he had 
reunited the nations and left that country en- 
joying universal peace." 

The next spring De Louvigny was sent back 
to secure the full performance of the conditions. 
During the winter, however, three of the Fox 
chiefs held at Quebec, had died of the small- 
pox, another, apparently the only remaining 
one, had lost an eye, and with but this solitary 
and disfigured hostage the French ofificer was 
compelled to return. He himself, a little tim- 
idly perhaps, stopped at Michillimackinac, and 
thence sent forward the one-eyed hostage, with 
two French interpreters to perfect the treaty. 
After their arrival among the Foxes, several 
days were spent in mourning for the dead. 
This to the savages was the most sacred of all 
solemnities. "Their toils and their com- 
merce," writes the Jesuit Brebeuf, ' "seem. to 
have no other end than to amass the means of 
honoring the departed; they have nothing too 
precious for this object; often in mid-winter 
you will see them going almost naked, while 
they have at home good and costly robes which 
they keep in reverence for the dead." And 
now the Foxes were bewailing the loss of their 

(1) Relation desHurons, 1636, 128. 

LofC. 



lOO HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

three principal chiefs — above all, of the re- 
nowned Pemoussa, who had commanded them 
at Detroit and had led the remnant of the 
nation safely back to its Wisconsin home. It 
was a common grief shared by every member 
of the tribe. Day after day they lay, face 
downward, upon their mats, speechless or else 
chanting the death-songs dolorously.' 

These solemn duties discharged, a council 
was called to consider the treaty with the 
French. The one-eyed hostage gravely 
harangued his countrymen upon their failure to 
keep the stipulations of the surrender. They, 
on their part, were very contrite and made 
many promises. They even signed an agree- 
ment in writing that they would send deputies 
to Montreal, the next spring, to finish the treaty. 
Armed with this precious document the hostage, 
with the two French interpreters, set out for 
Michillimackinac. 

But when they had gone about ten leagues, 
the hostage began to hesitate. He felt it his 
duty, he said, to go back to his people and labor 
with them in order that they might keep faith 
with the French. So saying, the savage diplo- 
mat turned his back upon his fellow travelers 

(1) Hale. Book of Iroquois Rites, 71. 



THE GAUNTLET TAKEN UP. loi 

and was soon lost to view in the depths of the 
forest. And that was the end of the treaty 
with the Foxes. 

Shall we pause to bewail the faithlessness of 
the Foxes.'' They had been schooled in per- 
fidy by the French, and the events at Detroit 
were still fresh in their memories; their suspic- 
ions had been roused by the mysterious death 
of their chiefs at Quebec; they were struggling 
for home and liberty against a host that had 
united for their destruction. It may be that 
their conduct was open to criticism. But let 
him that is without sin, just cast a stone at 
them. 

It is no part of my design to idealize the 
Fox Indians. Doubtless they were savages 
addicted to nudity, lying and other unsavory 
habits. Placed under the microscope of exact 
research, they became as unromantic as other 
human beings. But after all, the story of their 
resistance to the French, and of its wide- 
sweeping results, has about it as much of the 
heroic and the grand, as the hard realism of 
history will ever permit. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE GREAT CONFEDERACY. 

1716-I726. 

The expedition of De Louvigny had accom- 
plished nothing but evil. Instead of being 
destroyed, the Foxes had only been roused to 
fiercer efforts; now that the old chiefs were 
dead, slain by the small-pox at Quebec, there 
was no check upon the hot-headed impetuosity 
of the young warriors;' and the next year after 
the attempt to perfect the peace, they had 
joined with the Mascoutins and the Kickapoos in 
another war against the Illinois." Everywhere 
else tranquility reigned. But this wrath of the 
Wisconsin Indians against the T^rench and 
their vassals was the black thunder-cloud that 
seemed all the more ominous amidst the uni- 
versal sun-shine. "All would be peace on 
this continent," De Vaudreuil in 17 19 wrote 
plaintively to the king, "if it were not for this 

(1) Alluded to so late as 1727. Cass Manuscripts. Wis- 
consin Hist. Collections, III, 163. 

(2) De Vaudreuil to the Minister, Oct. 30, 1718. Cana- 
dian Archives, 1886, p. LVII. 



THE GREAT CONFEDERACY. 103 

perpetual war of the Foxes and their allies 
against the Illinois."' 

It was now the period of John Law and his 
celebrated Mississippi scheme. France, im- 
poverished by the gilded follies of Louis XIV, 
suddenly became a perfect fairy-land of mock 
prosperity.' Of course, the valley of the Mis- 
sissippi shared in this glamour; nothing was 
too absurd to be believed concerning its hidden 
wealth. Pearl-fisheries were said to abound in 
its waters. The prairies of Illinois were under- 
laid with vast deposits of gold and silver; and 
in 1 719, Renault, Director-General of the 
Mines of Louisiana was sent, with two hundred 
miners and artificers to unearth these fabulous 
treasures. The wool of the buffaloes also was 
to furnish inexhaustible material for the man- 
ufacture of cloth and hats; for this purpose 
they were to be domesticated, gathered in 
parks, and transported to France. ■* Forty 
years before, indeed, the mad brain of La Salle 
had given birth to this plan for utilizing the 
buffaloes."* 

(1) Ne^c York Coll. Documents, IX, 893. 

(2) Justamond, Leicis XV, vol. 1, page 82, gives a list of 
immense fortunes suddenly acquired . Consult also Buckle. 
Hist. Civilization, 1,516. 

(3) Charlevoix, Hist. New France, III, 389. 

(4) Parkman, La Salle. 



I04 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

The bubble soon burst, but it left behind it 
some solid benefits. Many colonists were for- 
warded; "persons without means of liveli- 
hood," according to St. Simon/ "sturdy beg- 
gars, male and female, and a quantity of pub- 
lic creatures were carried off;" but they entered 
upon a new life amidst the wilds of the Missis- 
sippi. A considerable settlement was formed 
below the Kaskaskia. Trade and agriculture 
flourished; not only furs but grain and flour 
were shipped down the river to France or to 
the West Indies. Fort Chartres was built with 
walls of solid masonry- — the key-stone in that 
great arch of forts which stretching from Que- 
bec to the mouth of the Mississippi was de- 
signed to shut the English up in the narrow 
strip of land along the Atlantic, and to establish 
the unity of the French Empire in the West. 

The Foxes, thererefore, in their struggle to 
destroy the Illinois Indians and to gain control 
of the Illinois river, were aiming their blows 
at the very heart of the French Dominion. 
The colonial authorities fully realized the dan- 
ger. ' ' The nation, " wrote Charlevoix in 1 72 1 , ' 
"which for twenty years past has been the 

(1) Memoires of St. Simon, III, 23(i. 

(2) Charlevoix. Letters, London, 1763. Letter XIX, 
July 21, 1721, p. 211. 



THE GREAT CONFEDERACY. 



105 



most talked of in these western parts is the 
Outagamies or Renards. The natural fierce- 
ness of their savagery soured by the ill-treat- 
ment they have received, sometimes without 
cause, and their alliance with the Iroquois have 
rendered them formidable. They have since 
made a strict alliance with the Sioux, a numer- 
ous nation inured to war; and this union has 
rendered all the navigation of the upper part 
of the Mississippi almost impracticable to us. 
It is not quite safe to navigate the river of the 
Illinois unless we are in a condition to prevent 
surprise, which is a great injury to the trade 
between the two colonies." 

But this account does not do full justice to 
the diplomacy of the Foxes; for, when Charle- 
voix wrote, they had not completed their work. 
Year by year they went on extending their 
league and increasing the uneasiness of the 
French. "They will array all the upper 
(western) nations against us," wrote one com- 
mandant to another.' And in the end a league 
was formed, by the side of which Pontiac's 
famous confederacy, or any other ever estab- 
lished among Indians, seems but a trivial 
affair. 

(1) M. de Lignery to M. de Siette. Cctss Manuscripts. 
Wisconsin Hist Collections, III, 155. 



I06 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

This great league comprehended, first, all 
the nations of Wisconsin, excepting those faith- 
ful henchmen of the French, the Chippewas. 
The Mascoutins and Kickapoos, as we have 
seen, had long been in closest union with the 
Foxes. The Sauks, even as late as the time of 
Charlevoix's visit,' had been divided into two 
factions, for and against the Foxes; but soon 
afterward they all joined the great confederacy. 
The Winnebagoes, also, were won over. Even 
the peaceful Menominees were drawn into the 
league against the French and were the first to 
feel their vengeance.'' 

These many tribes had hardly anything in 
common. They were of different races and 
languages; from the East, the West, the North 
and the South, they had been driven into Wis- 
consin like drift-wood flung upon a common 
shore. The uniting of these diverse, jealous, 
warring tribes is a wonderful tribute to the wis- 
dom and patience of the Foxes. 

Beyond the Mississippi, the league embraced 
the formidable Sioux. To break up this 
alliance and to bring the Sioux into commer- 
cial dependence upon the Chippewas, instead of 

(1) Charlevoix. Lelter8, 204. 

(2) Crespel's Narraiive. Wisconsin Hist. CoH.,X, 50, 
The Pottawattamies were faithful to the French, but had 
now abandoned Wisconsin for Michigan. 



THE GREAT CONFEDERACY. 107 

the Foxes, the French, in 17 19 had re-estab- 
lished their post at Chaquamegon Bay, not 
now, as formerly at its head, but at its entrance 
upon Madeleine Island.' They had also en- 
deavored to plant a post somewhere on the 
banks of the Upper Mississippi. But their 
efforts availed nothing. The Foxes held the 
two gateways to the West, and still monop- 
olized both the trade and friendship of the 
Sioux. 

Thanks to the jealousies which from the first 
had subsisted between Canada and Louisiana ^ 
both the Sioux and the Foxes were being 
amply equipped for war. The commandants 
in the north and the south, were disputing as 
to their respective jurisdictions, and were all 
eager to issue as many licenses as possible; the 
coiireiirs de bois, freed from restraint by these 
rivalries, were supplying the enemies of France 
with guns, powder and lead in abundance. ' 'This" 
the Marquis de Vaudreuil complained ^ "con- 
tributes more than all else to foster the haught- 
iness of the Sioux and the Foxes. The latter 
are especialh' intractable and have a very bad 
influence upon the former. They have so 

(1) Mai-gry. VI. 507. 

(2) Memoire (V Iberville. Margiy, IV, 611. 

(3) Lettre de M. de Vaudreuil, Nov. 4, 1720. Margry, 
VI, 509-10. 



I08 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

prejudiced them against us with stories of our 
treacherous designs that the Sioux turn a deaf 
ear to all the persuasions of our officers." 

The far-reaching diplomacy of the Foxes 
triumphed, even among the lowas and the 
tribes along the Missouri river. The govern- 
ment of Louisiana was at this time paying 
the closest attention to the Missouri country 
and had sent troops to build forts, as far west 
as the mouth of the Kansas river, to check the 
raids of the Spaniards from New Mexico.' In 
1724, M. de Bourgemont, the French commis- 
sioner in that quarter, communicated to the 
counsel at New Orleans an unpleasant discov- 
ery. "I have been greatly surprised," he 
writes, "to hear that the Hotos and the lowas 
have made a firm alliance with the Foxes and 
the Sioux, the enemies of the French."- 

He claims indeed to have so intimidated 
these savages that they had promised "not 
only to break their alliance with our enemies, 
but to fight them and do whatever I command." 
One cannot but suspect this sudden repentance 
on the part of the too contrite savages. At any 
rate, the French were greatly alarmed. ' ' If 

(1) Lettre de Bienville au Conaeil de Regence. Margiy, 
VI, 386. 

(2) Lettre, Jan. 11, 1724. Margry, VI, 466. 



THE GREAT CONFEDERACY. 



109 



these nations had raised the hatchet against 
us," continues M. de Bourgemont, "the Mayas 
and Paninkas would certainly have joined 
them. I doubt even whether we should have 
been able to sustain ourselves at Fort Chart- 
res." 

The sinister influence of the Foxes extended 
even into the far South. There, according to 
Charlevoix,' they entered into alliance with 
the Chickasaws, who, gathering around them 
all the hostile elements on the Lower Missis- 
sippi gained famous victories over the French. 
It was this diversion that saved the Foxes from 
utter ruin, at the crisis of their misfortunes. 

Such, then, was this great confederation built 
up by the genius of the Foxes, one which, con- 
sidering the vast extent of territory over which 
it stretched, the number of tribes and the di- 
versity of races which it included, is utterly 
without a parallel in the history of the Ameri- 
can Indians. The French pretended that it 
was the result of the intrigues of the English 
whom they saw everywhere, as people see 
ghosts in a graveyard. But there is no proof 
nor likelihood of any active co-operation on 
the part of the English. The league rose as 
we have described, the spontaneous work of 

(1) History of New France, V, 309, 



I lo HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

savag'es, who desired freedom and hated the 
French. 

Nor did the Foxes, amidst the toils of diplo- 
macy, neglect the work of war. Their attacks 
upon the Illinois went on unceasingly until all 
the latter, excepting one tribe, were compelled 
to flee far southward and seek protection under 
the guns of Fort Chartres. The tribe which 
did not flee, the Peorias, had taken refuge on 
Rock St. Louis. This famous rock, the whilom 
capital of La Salle's imaginary kingdom, was 
one of Nature's fortresses. Standing on the 
very brink of the Illinois river, it rose one hun- 
dred and twenty-five feet above the water's 
level. Its front over-hanging the river and 
both its sides were steep as castle walls; but 
in the rear was a narrow path-way by which 
the height could be scaled. The level summit, 
about an acre in extent, gave ample room for 
defense and afforded a grand view of the sur- 
rounding country — the undulating prairie, the 
distant hills, the shining river fenced by nar- 
row strips of forest. 

It was a formidable stronghold; but the un- 
daunted Foxes determined to take it. Unluck- 
ily we know nothing of the details of the siege, 
except the number of the slain; twenty Peorias 
and one hundred and twenty of the besiegers. 



THE GREAT CONFEDERACY. 1 1 1 

But the bare figures are eloquent; they tell, 
not of a mere blockade, but of fierce assaults, 
storming parties, desperate attempts to scale 
the heights — the old story of the Foxes' fury 
and reckless courage. Soon, however, word 
was carried to the commandant at Fort Chart- 
res, and he prepared to march to the rescue of 
his allies, with a force of one hundred and forty 
Frenchmen and four hundred savages. But 
before he arrived upon the scene, the Foxes 
raised the siege and marched away; they saw 
that with so large a force threatening their rear, 
the capture of the Rock was impossible. 

The attack seems a piece of splendid folly; 
but in the end its wisdom was fully justified. 
For, as soon as the siege was over, the besieged 
Peorias prepared to flee; they saw themselves 
at the mercy of the Foxes from whom there 
was no security, except on the barren summit 
of Rock St. Louis; and they, therefore, deter- 
mined to join the other Illinois tribes in the 
South. And no persuasion of the French 
could keep them from instantly putting this 
project into execution. "It was a grave dis- 
aster for the French," Charlevoix says.' "For 
now, that there was nothing to check the raids 

(1) History of New France, VI, 71. 



112 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

of the Foxes, communication between Canada 
and Louisiana became much less practicable. 
The French, however, made every effort to 
keep control of the Illinois river. Not long 
after the events just narrated, Sieur de St. Ange 
drew a large body of the Foxes into an ambus- 
cade and cut them to pieces. Other of their 
bands met with a similar fate. "But," writes 
Charlevoix, "their fury increased as their 
forces diminished. On every side they have 
raised up new enemies against us. The whole 
course and neighborhood of the Mississippi is 
infested with Indians with whom we have no 
quarrel, and yet who give to the French no 
quarter." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

EXTERMINATION BY FAMINE. 
1726-1728. 

On the 7th of June, 1726, at Green Bay, a 
grand council with the Sauks, Winnebagoes 
and Foxes was held by M. de Lignery, with 
whom were D'Amariton, the commandant of 
the post, and Chardon, its missionary. As 
usual upon such occasions, the savages were 
contrite and apologetic. They threw the 
blame for the past upon the impetuosity of 
their young warriors. "It is not without diffi- 
culty," said the chief of the Sauks, "that we 
have gained over our young men." The Win- 
nebago chief spoke in the same strain. "We 
old men do not agree with our young men, for 
if they sustained us they would never do any 
of these bad things." Then he began to ac- 
cuse the Foxes. "They are numerous, my 
father. It is they who invite our young men 
to do as they do for the fear they have of 
them." ' 

(I) Cas8 Manuscripts. Wis. His. Coll., Ill, 152, 3. 



I 14 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

On all sides there was a great clamor for 
peace. "The chiefs of the nations said, with 
tears, that there was no hope except in obedi- 
ence." But on both sides it was all a farce — 
the handshaking of pugilists in the prize ring, 
before the brutal fight begins. The French 
neither expected nor desired peace; they were 
bent upon the destruction of the Foxes. 

Even before the convening of the council, 
M. de Siette, commanding in the Illinois 
country, had written to M. de Lignery "that 
the Foxes were afraid of treachery, and that 
the surest mode of securing our object is to 
destroy and exterminate them.'" But the 
French authorities hesitated, not from any 
horror of such butchery, but because the at- 
tempt would be dangerous and expensive. 
"We agree that this would be the best expedi- 
ent, but we maintain that nothing can be more 
dangerous or more prejudicial to the colonies 
than such an enterprise, in case it should fail." 
The King of France wrote the governor gen- 
eral to the same effect — "for there is the un- 
certainty of success, and the consequences of 
a failure might be frightful, besides the enter- 
prise would cause a heavy expenditure."" 

(1) Ibid., p. 148. 

(2) Memoire of the French A'nrr/l to Beauharnois and 
Dupuy, on the Fo.v ^Ycu•, 29th April, 1727. 



EXTERMINATION BY FAMINE. i i 5 

The French, therefore for the time being, 
assumed a gentler tone. For the sake of con- 
ciHation they were wiUing even to forego the 
pleasure of burning their prisoners. "The 
Foxes testified to me," writes M. de Lignery, 
"that some of their nation had been given to 
the French, who had burned them upon the 
spot; this had completely exasperated them 
and made them anxious to kill." An order 
was now issued by the governor general to 
discontinue this practice; but in the order 
there was no tinge of a blush for the past. 
Burning men alive was simply inexpedient. 
"It has only served to irritate the Fox people 
and arouse the strongest hatred against us."' 

A peculiar piety lingered about this ferocity 
of the French. A little before the meeting 
of the council at Green Bay, the governor had 
addressed a deputation of Chippewas at Que- 
bec; and had condoled with them on account 
of their losses in war. "But it appears to 
me," he added, "that Heaven has revenged 
you for your losses, since it has given you the 
flesh of a young Fox to eat."^ What shall be 
said of a religion that could speak of the 
Supreme Being as actively engaged in provid- 

(1) Ibid., p. 149. 

(2) Ibid., p. 166. 



Il6 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

ing young and tender victims for a cannibal 
feast? 

The peace of 1726 then was a mere mock- 
ery. It was a temporary truce during which 
the French were busily preparing for the 
slaughter of the Foxes. "In the meantime," 
writes De Lignery, ' "we are laboring by way 
of La Pointe to detach the Sioux from their 
alliance. We endeavor also to stop their 
passage to the Iroquois, those Indians having 
offered them an asylum." Thus all avenues of 
escape, either to the east or the west, were to 
be closed against the doomed nation. 

To carry out this purpose so far as the Sioux 
were concerned, the French had been long 
trying to establish a trading post on the Mis- 
sissipj)i. But the art and fury of the Foxes 
had prevented. In 1725, Chardon, missionary 
at Green Bay, had written to his Superior that 
it was impossible to send an expedition or mis- 
sionaries to the Sioux on account of the Foxes 
who declared defiantly that they would never 
permit the French to pass because it would 
greatly diminish their own trade; and they 
had killed several Frenchmen who at different 
times had attempted it.^ But now that the 

(1) Letter to M. de Siette, June 19, 1726. Ibid., p. 154. 

(2) Ldl.re de Longueil et Begoii au Minister de Marine. 
Maigry, VI, 543. 



EXTERMINA TION B Y FAMINE. i 1 7 

truce was established, another effort was made. 
A trading corporation, the company of the 
Sioux, was formed; and in June, 1727, an ex- 
pedition commanded by La Perriere de 
Boucher, of infamous memory, with a few 
soldiers and traders and two missionaries, was 
dispatched from Montreal. 

The voyagers reached Green Bay safely, 
thence pushed up the river past the village of 
the Winnebagoes, and about eight leagues be- 
yond came in sight of the long, low cabins of 
the Foxes. The town built upon a slight 
eminence by the river side, contained — accord- 
ing to Inignas, one of the missionaries, who 
gives an account of the voyage' — only two 
hundred warriors. But it fairly swarmed with 
boys from ten to fourteen years of age who 
would soon be able to fill the places of the 
countless braves slain in the long warfare 
against the French. 

The little party drew near to the town with 
many misgivings; for this was the critical point 
of their journey. But peace had been recently 
established, and the savages were on their good 
behavior. "Of all nations, the Foxes are the 
most dreaded by the French," Guignas says, 
"but we found in them nothing to fear. As 
(1) Lettre a Beauharnois. Margry, VI, 554. 



Il8 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

soon as our canoes touched the shore they 
came to us with their pipes lighted, although 
it was raining heavily. And everybody 
smoked." 

A council was called; the French were read- 
ily permitted to proceed, and went on their 
way rejoicing. They soon arrived at Lake 
Pepin. There, at about the middle of the 
west side of the lake, upon a low spit of sand 
nearly opposite to the famous Maiden Rock, 
they built Fort Beauharnois. ' So much at least, 
the French had gained by their treaty of peace 
Avith the "faithless Foxes." 

This accomplished, the French threw aside 
the mask, declaring that peace was no longer 
possible. They claimed that war parties were 
still going from Wisconsin against the Illinois. 
They were alarmed at the encroachments of 
the English who had recently built a stone fort 
at Osv/ego, on Lake Ontario, and were said to 
be intriguing with the Indians for the expulsion 
of the French from the West. The F"oxes, it 
was reported, had accepted the belts of the 
English, and had declared that they would not 
suffer the French to remain in their country. 
"The colony," wrote the governor and intend- 

(1) Neill. Early Wlsconfihi Exploration. Wis. Hist. 
Coll., X, 302. Also Draper, Ibid., p. 371. 



EXTERMINA TION B Y FAMINE. i 1 9 

ant to the king, "is reduced to an extremity 
which justifies war." 

The colonial authorities were so eager to begin 
their fiendish crusade that they did not even 
wait for the approval of the king; and for this 
they were censured by the home government. 
But they amply justified themselves on two 
grounds. First; "it was already known that 
the court had nothing so much at heart as 
the destruction of the Foxes."' Secondly; 
"the intrigues of the English and thewar part- 
ies which the Foxes were raising every day did 
not allow them to defer this expedition for a 
year without endangering the loss of the whole 
country. "=" 

The preparations for the campaign were car- 
ried on with the utmost secrecy. The Cana- 
dians and friendly Indians were notified to hold 
themselves in readiness for a movement the 
next spring against the new English fort at 
Oswego; and until the last moment they knew 
nothing of their real destination. "It is the 
intention," wrote De Beauharnois to the king, 

(1) Cass Manuscript. Wis. Hist. Coll., Til, \M. 

(2) Memoire of De Beauharnois. Smith, History of 
Wisconsin, I, 343. Note. Just before the starting of the 
expedition, the king wrote: ' 'His Majesty is persuaded of 
the necessity of destroying the Fox nation." Letter of the 
king, 14 May, 1728. N. Y. Documents, IX, 1005. 



120 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

"to make this war a brilliant affair; and it is 
therefore of the utmost importance that the 
Foxes should not be informed of the design."' 

The expedition, commanded by M. de Lig- 
nery, left Montreal on the 5th of June, 1728. 
It was composed of four hundred Frenchmen 
and nearly nine hundred savages from many 
nations, but chiefly converted Iroquois and 
Hurons. A large re-enforcement of Indians 
was expected at Mackinac. The commandant 
in the Illinois country had also been ordered 
to meet the expedition at Green Bay with all 
his force, French and Indian." All this against 
a -handful of savages that did not now prob- 
ably number five hundred fighting men. 

The army toiled painfully over the usual 
route by way of the Ottawa river. In strug- 
gling through the wilderness, by narrow^ trails 
and dif^cult portages the force was necessarily 
split into small detachments; but by July 26th, 
all had reached the rendezvous on the shore of 
Lake Huron. Here mass was celebrated be- 
fore the reunited army. The place of worship 
was a green prairie, smooth as a temple floor, 
walled in upon the one side by the dim arches 
of the forest, on the other by the glistening 

(1) Wis. Hist. Coll., Ill, 163 and 164. 

(2) Letter to M. de Sieite, Aug. 20, 1727. Ibid., 103. 



EX TERMINA TION B Y FAMINE. \ 2 1 

waters of the inland sea. In the center stood 
three priests clad in the stately vestments of 
their office; before them an altar transported 
with infinite pains through the wilderness. 
Roundabout was a motley host. Soldiers in uni- 
form and Canadian hunters in their many- 
colored garb stood beneath the banners of 
France; scantily costumed savages crouched 
or lay flat on the ground, with eyes and ears 
intent upon the "great war medicine" of the 
French. After these pious exercises the mul- 
titude set out with new ardor to exterminate 
the Foxes. 

Mackinac was soon reached and here ensued 
an inexplicable delay. Everything depended 
upon a swift, unexpected swooping down upon 
the enemy; and yet M. de Lignery loitered 
for nine days. The whole army murmured; 
the Indians, always restless when on the war- 
path, were almost frantic over the detention. 
No excuse was ever offered for thus lingering 
except that "M. de Lignery was too ill to go 
on." But a more probable explanation is sug- 
gested by a statement made by Montcalm con- 
cerning this officer when long afterward he was 
in command at Fort Duquesne: "the Indians 
do not like M. de Lignery who is drunk every 
day."' 

(1) Parkman. Montcalm and Wolfe, II, 169. 



122 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

The expedition finally got under way, and 
on the 15th of August reached the abode of 
the Menominees, on the river of the same 
name. "This people," writes the chaplain of 
the army/ "are some of the tallest and hand- 
somest men in Canada." He coolly adds, that 
"we landed with a view to provoke them to 
oppose our descent; they fell into the trap and 
were entirely defeated." 

After this brilliant exploit, the French moved 
on to within eight or ten miles of the village 
of the Sauks at Green Bay. Here the expedi- 
tion was halted until night, and then paddled 
silently on under cover of the darkness. The 
Sauk village was reached about midnight; a 
part of the force was sent around to the rear 
to surround the sleeping foe; the rest made a 
brave dash on the front. Of course, the in- 
habitants amply warned, had fled. Four poor 
creatures, however, were found lurking in the 
cabins; and these were handed over to the 
French Indians, who "made them suffer the 
pain of twenty deaths before depriving them of 
life." 

Then the invaders passed up the river to the 
town of the Winnebagoes. . ' ' Our people were 

(1) Crespel. Expedition against the Foxen. Wis. His. 
Coll., X, .'50. 



EXTERMINATION BY FAMINE. 



123 



well disposed to destroy those that might be 
found there, but the flight of the inhabitants 
saved them and we could only burn their huts 
and destroy the harvest of Indian corn on 
which they subsist." 

Then, after celebrating mass, these devout 
vandals moved on to the chief settlement of 
the Foxes. But the savages, unwilling to be 
exterminated, had fled four days before. An 
old man, tVvo women and a girl were captured 
however, and burned at a slow fire. 

The French still paddled up the river until 
they reached another town of the enemy and 
found this too, a solitude. Their savage allies re- 
fused to go further, saying that the fugitives hav- 
ing four days the start, could not be overtaken. 
Winter, also, was rapidly approaching and the 
French were four hundred and fifty leagues 
from home; outwitted and foiled, they were 
compelled to return. On their way back they 
demolished the fort at Green Bay, believing 
that it could not be held any longer; took 
with them its garrison and missionary and has- 
tened homeward. 

Was then the tiger to be baulked of his 
prey.' No, malignity has many resources. 
Before setting out on their return the French 
army had "employed several days in laying 



124 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

waste the country, to deprive the enemy of 
the means of subsistence." Nothing escaped 
them. They burned the villages, they "des- 
troyed all that they could find in the fields, 
Indian corn, peas, beans and gourds, of all 
which the savages had great abundance."' 
Thus the Foxes, against whom all other arts 
had failed, were left to the mercies of winter 
and starvation. 

It seems, too, as if that mysterious and ma- 
lign element, so often found in Nature, had 
come to the aid of human hate. The next 
winter, according to the chief historian of New 
France, was one of unusual severity; such in- 
tensity of cold had hardly ever been known 
since the first settlement of Canada.^ To this, 
thousands of Fox women and children were 
left exposed, without shelter or food. The 
lambs had been shorn but the winds were not 
tempered. 

The glee of the French was great. 
"Neither the glory nor the arms of the king 
will suffer by this expedition," the official dis- 
patch declares. The more misery, it seemed 
to be thought, the more glory for the king; 

(1) Ibid., 53. 

(2) Ferland, Cours d Historie du Canada, II, 4.^5. Fer- 
land mentions this witliout any reference to tlie attempted 
starvation of the Foxes. 



EX TERMINA TION B Y FAMINE. 1 2 5 

and therefore the mathematical Frenchmen 
carefully computed the number of the perish- 
ing. "It is certain," wrote the Marquis de 
Beauharnois, triumphantly, "that one half of 
these nations who number four thousand souls, 
will die of hunger, and that the rest will ome 
in and sue for mercy." 



CHAPTER IX. 

EXTERMINATION BY FIRE. 
1728-1736. 

In the first days of September, 1728, four 
thousand exiles, their homes burned and their 
fields laid waste, were fleeing for their lives 
along the Wisconsin. The women and chil- 
dren were carried in canoes, but the warriors 
traveled on foot, struggling through the thick- 
ets and across the swamps and sands that 
lined the river.' Reaching the Mississippi, 
they turned to the North, and very soon a host 
of savages, wild with hunger and with rage, 
were peering through the leafy forests that 
rose above Fort Beauharnois on Lake Pepin. 
They had come expecting aid in the hour of 
their distress, from their friends and allies, the 
Sioux. But they found, as countless other poor 
wretches have found, that friendships are like 
reeds; they must not be leaned on too heavily. 
The Sioux had been won over to the French 
by the planting of the trading post in their 
midst the year before; and they turned a deaf 
ear to the entreaties and reproaches of their 

(1) Lettre au Miniatre de Marine, Oct., 1729. Margry, 
VI, 561. 



EXTERMINATION BY FIRE. 



127 



old confederates. "There is no doubt," the 
governor general wrote to the colonial minister, ^ 
"that the Foxes would have found an asylum 
with the Sioux, if the French fort had not 
been established there." 

Thus the confederacy formed by the Foxes 
with so much pains and skill began to crumble; 
not long after, these hapless savages were also 
deserted by their oldest and closest allies, the 
Mascoutins and Kickapoos. On the approach 
of the terrible Foxes, Fort Beauharnois had 
been temporarily abandoned, and a large part 
of its garrison, including Guignas, the mission- 
ary, had flod southward, hoping to find refuge 
among the Illinois, nearly six hundred miles 
away. But they were intercepted in their 
flight by the Mascoutins, who had been driven 
from Wisconsin into Northeastern Iowa. At 
first the captives were very roughly handled, and 
Guignas narrowly escaped being burned alive , 
According to his own account, however, he 
finally so ingratiated himself with the savages 
that they released him after five months of 
captivity, and sent with him envoys to the 
Illinois and the French to sue for peace." 

(1) Lettre au Ministre de Marine, Oct. 1729. Margiy 
VI, 561. 

(2) Lettres Edifiantes, I, 771. Lettre du Pe're Le Petit 
12 Juillet, 1730. 



128 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

Probably more potent reasons than the 
wheedling of the Jesuit, influenced the Mas- 
coutins. At any rate it is certain that in the 
spring of 1729, they declared war against the 
Foxes.' The Sauks also fell away and re- 
turned submissively to their old home at Green 
Bay. The Winnebagoes having fled from their 
devastated land, found refuge among the Sioux, 
and for the next nine years dwelt peacefully 
around Fort Beauharnois. "^ Under the press- 
ure of cajolery and violence the league had 
gone to pieces; the Foxes were left alone to 
face the storm of French vengeance. 

Driven away by the Sioux, they found some 
sort of an asylum in the land of the lowas.^ But 
subdued by hunger and cold, crushed by the 
desertion of all their allies, longing for home, 
they returned the next season to Wisconsin. 
They were broken in spirit, willing to yield 
everything to the insatiable French. "The 
Foxes are begging for peace," Beauharnois 
wrote triumphantly to the King.'' But their 

(1) BeauharnoiH to the Minister, May 19, 1729. Cana 
dian Archives, 1886, p. xcv. 

(2) Memoir upon the Indians of Canada, 173G. New 
York Coll. Docs., X, p. xcv. Also Margry, VI, 575. 

(3) Memoir of Beauharnois, 1729. Smith's Hist. Wis- 
consin, 344. 

(4) Letter to the minister, Aug. 17, 1729. Canadian 
Archives, 1886, p. XCV. 



EXTERMINATION BY FIRE. 



129 



peaceful proposal was answered only by a fierce 
assault upon one of their encampments by a 
body of French Indians.' 

Somewhat later, probably about the close of 
1729, another expedition, composed of Ottawas, 
Chippewas, Menominees andWinnebag"oes,was 
sent against the returning exiles, and succeed- 
ed in ambuscading a detachment of them. The 
latter had only eighty warriors; but they fought 
with their wonted valor, until all excepting 
three were either killed or captured. Three 
hundred women and children were also taken 
prisoners. All were burned to death. 

The French authorities were delighted. 
Beauharnois wrote to the minister exultantly: 
"I communicate this news with so much the 
more pleasure because there is no doubt of it."' 
The French used to apologize for their 
burning of prisoners as a lesson taught them 
by the savages. "Among the wolves we have 
learned to howl," wrote Cadillac flippantly. = 
But the savages burned men — conceiving that 
death at the stake was that final and supreme 
test of courage from which no brave man ought 
to shrink. The burning of women and chil- 
li) Letter of Oct. 25, 1729. Ibid., p. xcvii .Also JV. Y. 
Coll. Does., IX, 1017. 
(2) Relation, etc. Margry, V, 100. 
9 



I30 



HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 



dren, however, subserved no such purpose, 
and was something quite unknown to the prim- 
itive red man. He regarded children, especially, 
with so passionate and indulgent a love that his 
indignation was aroused by even the sight of the 
whippings and other severities visited upon the 
young in the white man's settlements; and to 
torture the little ones at the stake was a devel- 
opment of malignity far beyond the reach of 
his unprogressive nature. That was the in- 
vention of the French — one of those depths of 
infamy into which it would seem that only the 
civilized can sink, as a stone descends with the 
greater force when it falls from the greater 
height. 

Despite these barbarities on the part of their 
enemies, the Foxes did not yet despair of 
peace. Not long after the burning of the 
three hundred women and children, the great 
chief of the nation made his way through the 
wilderness in the depth of winter, to the dis- 
tant post of St Joseph in southern Michigan. 
"I look upon myself as dead," he said to the 
commandant there. Asking for nothing ex- 
cept the lives of the women and children, he 
promised that this people would send deputies to 
Montreal the next spring to sue for mercy. 



EXTERMINATION BY FIRE. 



131 



But the doomed nation might as well have 
appealed to the pity of the winds. In March, 
1730, they were again attacked by a force un- 
der the command of the afterwards noted 
Marin. "An action ensued of the warmest 
kind, and very well supported," says the offi- 
cial dispatch. Beyond that we know nothing. 

One thing about this transaction, however, 
is noteworthy. The French now began, ap- 
parently, to feel some slight sense of shame 
over this persistent malignity toward a foe 
suing for mercy; and they tried to excuse 
themselves by casting the blame upon their 
savage allies. "This expedition was under- 
taken," we are told, "at the earnest solicita- 
tion of the Indians." 

But if any one doubts who were really at the 
bottom of these atrocities let him read how 
these same Ottawas were induced by the 
French to massacre the forty Iroquois deputies 
at Mackinaw, in 1695. -^t first the Ottawas 
sturdily refused to thus violate the law of na- 
tions which was just as sacred among the 
savage as the civilized; but they were plied 
with liquor by the French until they became a 
mere mob of drunken madmen, and in this 
condition they fell upon the unsuspecting dep- 
uties and slew them all. Frontenac, then gov- 



132 



HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 



ernor, narrates all this without the tinge of a 
blush, and adds boastfully: "Thus we have 
entirely broken up the inception of peace."' 

Two months after Marin's departure, another 
exterminating expedition, composed of five 
hundred and fifty Indians and fifty Frenchmen, 
set out from Mackinaw. Its commander, Du 
Buisson, declared that "all the nations of the 
upper country are very much excited against 
the Foxes; large bodies of Indians have col- 
lected and urged me to go at their head to fall 
upon that people and destroy them." But the 
statement, doubtless, is as false as those which 
he made, at the time of the betrayal and mas- 
sacre of the Foxes at Detroit, in 171 2. 

At any rate, Du Buisson and his allies were 
foiled of their prey. Even before they were 
ready to start, the enemy had fled southward 
beyond reach of pursuit. 

When the curtain next rises upon the 
wretched fugitives, we find them gathered 
on the Illinois river, not far from Rock St. 
Louis, and there fortifying themselves as for a 
desperate resistance. Word was quickly sent 
to all the commandants in that part of the 
West — St. Ange in the country of the Illinois, 
De Noyelles among the Miamis in Indiana, De 

(1) Nan-ative of 1695-6. New York Col. Docts., IX, 
640. 



EXTERMINATION BY FIRE. 



133 



Villiers at Fort St. Joseph in Michigan; and 
they all assembled their forces and hastened 
to the spot, determined to sweep the unhappy 
Foxes from the earth. De Villiers took com- 
mand of the combined forces which amounted 
to eleven hundred Indians and one hundred 
and seventy Frenchmen. 

The battle began on the 19th of August, 
1730, and lasted twenty-two days. The Foxes 
had chosen an admirable position in a piece of 
woods upon a gentle slope by the side of a 
small river. Although outnumbered four to 
one, they fought with their usual dash and 
valor, making many desperate sorties, but were 
each time driven back by the overwhelming 
numbers of the enemy. The French, on their 
part, dug trenches, and proceeded with all the 
caution they had been taught by many cam- 
paigns against these redoubtable foes." 

(1) Ferland, Cours d'Histoire du Canada, II, 436, seq. 
To this historian's heretofore unnoticed account, I am in- 
debted for my narrative of this battle. Ferland, unfortu- 
nately, never gives his authorities; but he is known to 
have been an untiring deh'er among the manuscripts in the 
Archives at Paris. The slight reference to Do Villiers' ex- 
pedition, preserved in the New York Col. DoctH., so far as 
it goes, corroborates the account of Ferland. And the 
Canadian Archives Report, 1886, p. c, lists a dispatch 
aboat " the crushing defeat of the RenardsbyDe Villiers.'' 
Letter of Beauharnoia and Hocquart to the Minister, 
Nov. 1, 1730. 



134 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

After a while the supply of food gave out 
and famine reigned in both camps. The Foxes 
and the French, the oppressed and the op- 
pressor, suffered alike under the calm, cruel 
impartiality of nature, Two hundred Illinois 
Indians deserted. But the French persevered, 
and began the construction of a fort to prevent 
the besieged from going to the river for water. 
Further resistance now seemed impossible. 

But on the 8th of September, a violent storm 
arose, accompanied by heavy thunder and tor- 
rents of rain. The following night was rainy, 
dark and cold; and under its cover, the Foxes 
stole away from their fort. Before they had 
gone far, the crying of their children betrayed 
them. But the French did not dare to attack 
them amidst a darkness so dense that it was im- 
possible to distinguish friend from foe; in the 
morning, however, they set out in hot pursuit. 

The fugitives marched with the women, 
children and old men at the head, the warriors 
in the rear to protect their flight; thus cum- 
bered they advanced but slowly and were soon 
overtaken. The warriors were without ammuni- 
tion,' enveloped on every side by a vastly su- 

(1) Even during the siege, the Foxes had been supplied 
with ammunition, only by the help of some of the French al- 
lies livho secretly favored them. Ferland, Cours d'Hia- 
torie, II. 



EXTERMINATION BY FIRE. 



135 



perior and well-armed force, entangled in 
crowds of helpless women and children whom 
they were striving to defend. Under such 
conditions the battle soon became a massacre. 
Only fifty or sixty men escaped; three hundred 
"were killed or burned after being taken pris- 
oners,'" Six hundred women and children also 
perished either under the tomahawk or by 
fire. 

The proportion of women and children to 
that of men slaughtered is here not so great as 
in previous massacres. The reason was that 
many of the savages, notably the Miamis and 
Sauks, recoiled from this wholesale murdering 
of the defenseless. The French complained 
that even during the siege, "their allies, un- 
der various pretexts, helped a large number of 
the women and children to escape from the 
fort and thus saved them from the massacre of 
their nation."^ " 

Still nine hundred men and women had been 
massacred, either by the knife or by the slower 
and more horrible doom of fire; and despite 
the escape of a few, the French were cheerful. 
" Behold," wrote the Canadian governor to the 

(1) N. Y. Col. Documents, IX. This dispatch puts the 
number at 200, Ferland at 300. 

(2) Ferland, II, 438. 



136 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

king, "a nation humiliated in such a fashion 
that they will nevermore trouble the earth."' 

Happily we are now permitted a slight 
breathing-spell midst this recital of horrors. 
The curtain suddenly falls, for two years, upon 
the wanderings and miseries of the indomitable 
Foxes. There is indeed one report of an at- 
tack made upon them by the young warriors 
of Illinois,^ and other similar enterprises are 
vaguely mentioned.^ But in the main it is an 
interval of peace. The French availed them- 
selves of it to re-establish the fort on Lake 
Pepin which they had been compelled to aban- 
don;" and rejoiced in other "happy results 
from the defeat of the Foxes. "^ 

When, on the 17th of October, 1732, the 
curtain again rises, the remnant of the Foxes 
are dwelling peaceably upon the borders of 
the Wisconsin. But the wrath of the implaca- 
ble French had flamed forth anew. A body 
of Christian Iroquois from the St. Lawrence, 

(1) M. de Beauharnois ^a M. de Maurepas , Ibid., 18 
Mar., 1731. 

(2) Beauharnois to the Minister, Oct. 12, 1731. Cana- 
dian Archives. 1886, p. CVII. 

(3) Forland, II, 439. 

(4) Leftre de Beanharnois. Margry, VI, 569. 
(T)) Ibid. Canadian Archives, cvii. 



EX TERMINA T ION BY FIRE. j 3 7 

and of Hurons from Detroit, had been dis- 
patched from the latter place to once more 
exterminate the people who had been so piti- 
lessly pursued for twenty years. The invaders 
pushed on until they reached the basin of the 
Wisconsin. Ascending one day the summit 
of a hill, they looked down and beheld their 
prey dwelling quietly in the vale beneath. It 
was the work of but a moment to discharge 
their guns, and tomahawk in hand swoop down 
upon the village. The Foxes expecting no 
danger were but poorly prepared for battle, 
and after a short contest three hundred of 
them — men, women and children — were cap- 
tured and massacred.' 

The rest dispersed among the neighboring 
nations. One party, consisting of thirty or 
forty men and as many women, wended their 
way in despair to Green Bay and threw them- 
selves upon the mercy of the French command- 
ant, De Villiers. In this party was the grand 
chief of the Foxes, Kiala, who was soon sent 
to Quebec, and thence hurried off into slavery 
under the blazing skies of Martinique. His 
wife followed him as far as Quebec; but there 

(1) Ferland, II, 438, alone gives the narrative of this ex- 
pedition. But he is very fully corroborated by the lists 
and abstracts of despatches in the Report of Canadian 
Archives, 1886, p. cxi, et seq. No less than five are given- 



138 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

she lingered for some time, distracted between 
her wifely affection and her horror of bondage. 
At last woman's love conquered, and she went 
to join her husband in the slave-gang. 

The historian may well rejoice in this little 
bit of savage romance, sad but sweet, that 
comes to relieve the blackness of all these civ- 
ilized iniquities. 

The other fugitives who fled to Green Bay 
were more fortunate; for nearly a year they 
were permitted to remain undisturbed in the 
village of the Sauks, across the river from the 
fort. But the French government finally de- 
termined to demand their surrender; and to 
enforce this demand, M. de Repentigny, the 
commandant at Mackinaw, was secretly sent 
with sixty Frenchmen and two hundred In- 
dians to the aid of De Villiers, who had been 
promoted to the command at Green Bay; after 
a consultation between the two officers, this 
force was ordered to lie concealed about a mile 
from the fort until three gun-shots should be 
heard, which was to be the signal for an im- 
mediate advance. This arranged, De Villiers 
returned to the fort, and sending for the Sauk 
chiefs, laid his demands before them. 

Life, he said, had been accorded by the 
government to the Fox fugitives, but only on 



EXTERMINA TION B Y FIRE. i 3 9 

condition that they should deliver themselves 
to him, in order to be carried to Montreal; if 
they were not forthcoming at a certain hour, 
he further declared, he himself would go to the 
Sauk village and take them. The chiefs lis- 
tened gravely and then withdrew to consult 
with their people. One can readily imagine 
the results; the Foxes having in view the fate 
of their great chief, Kiala, and the horrors of 
Martinique, were quite unwilling to go to Mon- 
treal; the Sauks, with whom, as with all sav- 
ages, the rites of hospitality were sacred, 
having once welcomed the fugitives into their 
cabin, would not betray them. The hour 
passed; but the Foxes did not appear at the 
fort. De Villiers taking with him De Repen- 
tigny and eight other Frenchmen, hastened 
to the palisaded village of the Sauks to carry 
out his threat. Enraged by the contempt of 
the savages for his authority, and maddened, 
according to the traditions, by strong drink, 
he attempted to force an entrance. The prin- 
cipal chief entreated him to desist, saying that 
the young men could not be controlled, and 
that if he did more, he was a dead man.' 

(1) Ferland. Cours d' Histoire, II, 440. He is abun- 
dantly corroborated by no less than five lengthy dispatches 
devoted to this affair that are listed in Brymner's Report. 
1886. 



I40 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

The furious Frenchman not only persisted, 
but drew up his gun and shot the chief dead. 
With unabated fury he slew another chief, and 
then a third. For a moment the Sauks were 
stupefied, and the first to recover himself was 
a brave boy, only twelve years of age, who 
leveled his gun and killed the brutal comman- 
dant." Then a general melee ensued, in which 
De Repentigny and all the Frenchmen except 
one were slain. 

In this account I have followed the French 
reports except in regard to the first firing, 
which they claim was done by the Indians. 
But herein the carefully preserved tradition is 
intrinsically more credible; besides, it is cor- 
roborated by the admission of the ofificial dis- 
patches, that "the disaster was caused by 
the rash courage of De Villiers."'' And which- 
ever account may be true, it is plain enough 
that the outrageous Frenchman met only his 
just deserts. 

But the French thought only of revenge. 

(1) Grignon's Recollections. Wis. Hist. Colls., Ill, 204. 
So far as known to me, this noted tradition recorded by 
Grignon, has never before this been coiToborated and it3 
date fixed by reference to Ferland or to the Canadian Re- 
ports. Another version of the tradition is given in Wis. 
Hist. Colls, VIII, 207. 

(2) Letter of Beauharnois to the minister, Oct. 13, 1733. 
Canadian Archives, 1886, p. cxx. 



EXTERMINATION BY FIRE. 



141 



The governor writing to the minister recounts 
"the perfidy of the Sauks, who have killed 
De Villiers and others;" and declares that it is 
necessary to avenge them.' The Sauks, fore- 
seeing the storm of vengeance that was to 
burst upon them, prepared to abandon their 
country forever, and after three days set out in 
the darkness of the night. The French, who 
had not dared attack them behind their pali- 
sades, pursued and overtook them about twen- 
ty miles away. There a fierce battle was 
fought with heavy losses on both sides. The 
Sauks then continued on their way. 

The exiles wandered far and long, gathering 
up the fragments of the Fox nation as they 
went. In their extremity they sought an asy- 
lum among the lowas, but were refused. Then 
they turned to the Sioux and Winnebagoes 
settled around Fort Beauharnois. But these 
prudent savages were solicitous for their trade; 
vowed eternal friendship with the French and 
asked to be led to battle against the Sacs and 
Foxes. Linctot, the commandant, however, 
doubted the depth of their devotion, and 
wisely refused to head another crusade.^ The 

(1) Report of Beauharnois and Hocqunrt, "Nov. 11,1733, 
Ibid, oxix. 

(2) Margry, VI, 570. Extract d'une Lettre Mme. de 
Beauharnois et Hocquart au de Minisfre de la Marine. 
7 Oct. 1734. 



142 



HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 



wanderers, left to themselves, finally fixed their 
abode on the Wapsipinacon river about two 
or three day's journey southwest from the 
mouth of the Wisconsin. 

Even into this far country the hate of the 
French pursued them. In August, 1734, De 
Noyelles, with eighty Frenchmen and the 
usual contingent of converted savages, set out 
from Montreal to reach the exiled Sacs and 
Foxes. This expedition from the first, was 
strangely mismanaged; several months were 
consumed in the march; in the meantime the 
enemy had fled farther westward and strongly 
fortified themselves on the banks of the Des 
Moines. The French arriving at last, carried 
on a desultory and farcical kind of siege for 
several weeks. Their Indian allies grew dis- 
gusted and many deserted. As all hopes of 
success dwindled away, the French smothered 
their wrath and began to negotiate. They 
succeeded in cajoling the Sauks into some sort 
of a promise that they would separate from 
the Foxes and relight their fires at Green Bay. 
Then the French set out on their inglorious re- 
turn' 

(1) 60 were regular soldiers, according to the army re 
port of Beauharnois, Oct., 1734. New York Coll Docs, IX, 
1046. 

(2) Ferland, 11,441. Also N. Y, Coll. Documents, IX, 
1051. Three dispatches devoted to this expedition are 
listed in Can. Archives, p. cxx to cxvii. 



EXTERMINA TION B Y FIRE. 1 43 

'•The ill-success of De Noyelle's expedi- 
tion," wrote the governor apologetically, "was 
due to the bad conduct of the Indians, 
and especially the Hurons."' But the French 
themselves had lost all stomach for any further 
fight with their indomitable foes, and the dis- 
patch just quoted proceeds to point out the 
"great danger of pushing the Sacs and Foxes 
to extremity. " The next year it was announced 
that peace had at last been established with 
those nations.* 

Thus the war against the Foxes was ended, 
after having lasted just a quarter of a century. 
During that time these savages confronted an 
array of horrors which has no counterpart in 
history. The triple agencies of the sword, 
starvation and the stake were evoked to 
destroy them. They were betrayed by their 
friends, and entrapped by the matchless per- 
fidy of their foes. Their homes were burned, 
their lands laid waste , and they themselves 
driven forth, like wild beasts from their dens. 

In four states of this Union, Michigan, Illi- 
nois, Iowa and Wisconsin, they were hunted, 
besieged and slaughtered. Wherever they 
went their trail could almost be traced by the 
dripping of their blood. Two thousand of them 

(1) Letter of Beauharnois, Oct. 17, 1736. 

(2) Ibid., Oct. 16, 1737. C. A. p. cxxxi. 



144 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

— if the French did not over estimate their 
own baseness — were left in a single winter to 
die of cold and hunger. Out of their small 
numbers twenty-five hundred were burned to 
death at slow fires. 

The story of it all affects us like the visions 
of Dante's Inferno; one is incredulous rather than 
horrified. But every item of the story rests 
upon the admissions, or rather the boasts, 
of the French themselves. The Indian version 
of it has never been told. 

And these wonderful savages were not ex- 
terminated. According to a French memoir 
of 1736, they still had one hundred warriors — 
seven or eight hundred souls in all. Nor were 
they ever subjugated. That same year, 1736, 
Boulanger, a French missionary, wrote to the 
colonial minister: "They have deceived the 
king in making him believe that the Foxes are 
destroyed * * * The only result has been 
to augment expenditures and render that na- 
tion more insolent then before.'"' It makes one 
think better of poor humanity to read that. 

The Foxes, although reduced to a little band 
of exiles, were as undaunted and defiant as 
ever. But in attempting to destroy them, the 
French Dominion in the West had received a 
blow from which it never recovered. 

(1) Ferland, II, 441, 



CHAPTER X. 

THE WEST IN REVOLT. 

1738-1752. 

We have described in a former chapter the 
policy of cajolery and intimidation by which 
the French hoped to secure the allegiance of 
the Indians and the control of the continent. 
Up to 1 712 this policy had been successful. 
Drawn by their desire for trade and their re- 
spect — almost reverence — for the mysterious 
power of the whites, the Indians were, in the 
main, friendly to the French. But at the end 
of the Fox war all this had changed. The splen- 
did resistance of the Wisconsin savages, and the 
revelation of the white man's weakness and 
wickedness had disenchanted the Indians. The 
prestige of the French was gone. The larger 
part of their trade had been diverted either to 
Hudson's Bay or, through the Iroquois, to the 
English settlements on the coast. Indian friend- 
ship had given way to turbulence, sullenness 
and contempt. In trying to stamp out the 
Wisconsin fires the French had only scattered 
the sparks in every direction. 
10 



146 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

The Sioux, the ruling nation beyond the 
Mississippi, became refractory and hostile. In 
1736 they massacred a part of Verendrie's 
force and put an end to his explorations in the 
remote West; about the same time they began 
a fierce war against the Chippewa allies of the 
French;' and the next year became so riotous 
around Fort Beauharnois on Lake Pepin — 
burning the buildings and pillaging the traders 
— that the post had to be abandoned." Thus 
the French were cast off from the West. 

Simultaneously the flames of revolt burst 
forth in the South, and the French suffered 
frightful disasters in their vain attempt to sub- 
jugate the Chickasaws. Eastward also the fires 
spread. Even those humble servants of the 
French, the Hurons anil Ottawas around De- 
troit, became turbulent and for three years 
made ceaseless trouble.^ In 1740, the Cana- 
dian governor wrote to the court lamenting 
the "drunkenness and insolence of the Indian 
allies in the West."'' Discontent and tumult 
reigned everywhere. 

(1) Letters of La Ronde, Conid't at Chequamegou, June 
28 and July 21, 1738. Can. Archives, 1886, p. cxxxiv. 

(2) Mavgry. VI, 575. 

(IJ) Beauharnois to the Mini.Hter, Sept. 17, 1741. Can. 
Archives, 1886, p. cxLix. 

(4) Ibid, July 6, 1740, p. cxiiiv. 



THE WEST IN REVOLT. 



147 



The Foxes, although seemingly crushed and 
cut to pieces, needed only a little breathing 
spell and then they too were ready for revolt. 
Peace had been made with them in 1737 as we 
have seen. But it could not have lasted long; 
for in 1739 the French were forced to make 
another peace with these irrepressible savages.' 
This proved also a very fleeting affair. The 
Foxes renewed their ancient alliance with the 
Sioux, and in 1741 both were again warring 
against the French allies, the Chippewas in the 
north and the Illinois in the south." In 1742, 
however, the Canadian governor announces 
"the submission of the Sioux, Sauks and 
Foxes. "^ But the next year he makes another 
report in a more subdued strain concerning 
"the measures taken to prevent a union be- 
tween the Sioux and the Foxes."'' 

A somewhat later dispatch apologizes for the 
increase of colonial expenditures by the plea 
that they had been obliged that "year to give 
so many presents to the Sioux, the Sauks and 
Foxes. "5 To that condition the French Do- 

(1) Ibid, June 30, 1739, p. cxxxvii. 

(2) Ibid, Sept. 24, 174], p. CXI.IX. 

(3) Ibid, Sept. 24, 1742, p. CXLII. 

(4) Ibid, Sept. 18, 1743, p. cxivi. 

(.5) Letter to Count Maurepas, Oct. 13, 1743. N. Y. Col. 
Documents, IX, 1099. 



148 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

minion in the West had been reduced. It ex- 
isted at the sufferance of these truculent sav- 
ages who could be pacified only by presents. 

During these turbulent times, the Chippe- 
was began to form settlements in the interior 
of Northern Wisconsin; having finally lost the 
friendship and trade of the Sioux, their posi- 
tion on the shore of Lake Superior became less 
valuable and many of them withdrew to better 
hunting grounds on the head waters of the Chip- 
pewa and other rivers. Tradition preserves 
a graceful story concerning the origin of one of 
these new villages. While a hunting party was 
encamped on the shore of a lake in the forest, 
a little child died and was buried by the water- 
side. The party pressed on. But the hearts 
of the father and mother still clung to the child 
and the next summer they came back to grieve 
by the grave. Unable to tear themselves 
away, they built their lodge there, alone in the 
woods, on the war-path of their enemies, but 
close to the precious ashes. But their grief 
was sacred and no one molested them. From 
time to time other Chippewas came and built 
their lodges likewise by the side of the lake. 
Thus began the still existing village of Lac 
Court Oreilles.' 

(1) Warren, History of the Ojihivaya. Minnesota Hiet. 
11, V. 127. 



THE WEST IN REVOLT. 149 

The story has no sponsor except tradition. 
But it is of historic value for the light it throws 
upon the Indian nature — that tangled incon- 
gruity of good and bad which underlies the red 
skin and the white. 

Still the whirligig of war and peace went on. 
lu 1747 the Canadian governor wrote to the 
colonial minister that " there is a great change 
of feeling among the Indians of the West, and 
that the state of affairs there is very bad."' 
In 1747, Marin, commanding at St. Joseph in 
Western Michigan, reports that the savages in 
that quarter, heretofore so faithful to the 
French, "are being debauched by the English. "- 
The same year another commandant writes 
concerning "the great revolt in the Detroit 
region."^ Of this revolt, notable as arising 
among the chief allies of the French, Pontiac 
spoke in 1763, saying that "seventeen years 
ago the Northern nations combined under the 
great chief, Mackinac, and came to destroy the 
French at Detroit; and that he (Pontiac) aided 
the French in fighting their battles with Mack- 
inac and driving him home to his country."'' 

(1) Beauharnois to the MinUter Oct. 29, 1745. Cana- 
dian Archives, 1887, p. CLVii. 

(2) New York Col. Documents, X, 139. 

(3) ilf. de Raymond to the Minister, Nov. 2, 1747. Cass, 
Archives, 1887, p. CLXV. 

(4) Smith. History of Wisconsi^i, I, 361, 



150 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

The next year the Miamis, then the most 
powerful and peaceful confederacy east of the 
Mississippi, revolted, pillaged a French fort 
and committed other acts of violence.' The 
French began to see the handwriting on the 
wall. Startling rumors arose of a vast con- 
spiracy among all the Western Indians to de- 
stroy the trading posts and drive the white 
man from the country.^ Even the Chippewas, 
so long faithful to the French, were now drawn 
into the fiery circle of revolt. In 1748, Galis- 
soniere, the governor, reports that the voy- 
ageurs had been robbed and maltreated at Sault 
Ste Marie and elsewhere on Lake Superior. 
"In fine," he adds, "there appears to be no 
security anywhere."^ 

In 1750 the Miamis again revolted, leaguing 
themselves with the Mascoutins on Rock River 
and even urging the Illinois to join them; but 
the latter with characteristic slavishness be- 
trayed the plot to the French." And not long 

(1) iVewj York Coll. Documents, X, 140 and 150. Also 
other references. 

(2) Ibid., 142. 

(3) Letter to Count Maurepas, Oct. 1748. Neilli7i Minn. 
Hist. Coll.,\, 430. 

(4) Letter of M. Benoist, concerning a conapiracy of the 
Miamis, Oct. 1, 1751. Can. Archives, 1887, p. cxc. Also 
Dispatch of De Vaudreuil, Sept, IS, 1750. N. Y. Col. 
Documents, X, 220. 



THE WEST IN REVOLT. i 5 1 

after, the French were forced to build a fort at 
Sault Ste Marie, "to prevent the Chippewas 
and other Indians from communicating with 
the English." ' 

Thus I have laboriously collected the widely 
scattered evidence of the real relations subsist- 
ing between the French and Indians. The 
common conception which has passed into his- 
tory is, that the two races dwelt together like 
cooing doves. But in fact, from 1737 onward 
the French could hardly depend upon the 
friendship even of the refugee tribes, the 
Hurons, Ottawas and others. And of the 
original occupants of the West all were hostile 
except the Illinois, a people debauched and 
spiritless who were fast fading away before the 
fury of the Foxes and the Sioux. 

We catch a glimpse also of the hidden forces 
that were working for the overthrow of New 
France. Her destiny had been virtually de- 
cided long before the English armies encamped 
around Quebec. The policy by which she 
hoped to hold the continent had proved an 
utter failure; the Indians were estranged and 
trade demoralized; a chaos of revolt and mis- 
rule had set in throughout the whole magnifi- 
cent domain. 

(1) Jonquiere to the Minister, Oct. 5, 1751. Can. Archives. 
CLXXXIX. 



152 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

And has it not been likewise shown that the 
long and gallant resistance of the Wisconsin 
Indians, in the face of great odds and frightful 
sufferings, was the entering wedge of ruin for 
the French Dominion in America. 

Other causes were, of course, conspiring to 
hurry on the PVench Dominion to ruin. By 
the middle of the century the colonial govern- 
ment had touched the lowest point of corrup- 
tion. It was the era of Bigot, the evil genius 
of New France. He and his accomplices were 
stealing millions from the king, the colonists, 
the soldiers and the savages. No one escaped 
their rapacity; even the Acadian exiles were 
fed on mouldered and unsaleable cod-fish, which 
was charged to the king at enormous prices.' 
Montcalm boldly averred that the chief 
officials of New France were "hoping and plot- 
ting for the ruin of the colony in order that all 
recorded evidence of their peculations might 
be hidden under the wreck."" 

Under such malign influences the fur trade 
sank lower and lower, until it became but an- 
other name for plundering the savages. Ac- 

(1) Parkman. Montcalm and Wolf, II, 27. 

(2) Montcalm to Marshal de Belle Isle, April 12, 1759. 
Can. Archives, 1887, p. ccxxix. Also Garneau. History 
of Canada, I, 547. 



THE WEST IN REVOLT. 153 

cording to the admission of the French them- 
selves their goods were inferior and their 
prices enormous.' The traders carried large 
supplies of liquors and made the savages drunk 
in order to swindle them more effectually. At 
one western post in 1754, beaver skins were 
sold for four grains of pepper apiece; and a 
pound of paint which the savages bought to 
improve their complexions, realized a profit of 
eight hundred francs." 

The savages struggled to escape from such 
a system of multiplied robberies. The Miamis 
for instance, after two or three revolts, moved 
eastward into Ohio in order to open trade with 
the English. "Our friendship," they told 
Gist, the envoy from Virginia, "shall stand 
like the lofty mountain." ^ 

Even in these evil times Wisconsin did not 
lose the prominence which it had had from the 
first days of the French Dominion. Green Bay 
now became the chief center of operations in 
the west for that band of corrupt ofificials who 
were plundering both the Indians and the gov- 
ernment. 

(1) Bigot to the Minister, Oct. 1749. N. Y. Coll. Docu- 
ments, X, 200. Also De Bougainville, iu Margry's Memoirs 
Inedites, p. 74. 

(2) Smith. Canada, I, p. Lxviii. 

(3) Bancroft. History of the United States, III, 54. 



154 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

In 1750 Marin was sent to Green Bay osten- 
sibly to act as governor of the northwest and 
to continue the explorations of Verendry in 
search of a passage to the Sea of the West. 
Really he came to manage the affairs of a se- 
cret partnership, of which he himself, Bigot, 
the intendant of the colony, and La Jonquiere, 
its governor, were the members.^ Their object 
was to monopolize as far as possible the fur 
trade of the Northwest, and their annual profits 
amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand 
livres, equal to as many dollars in the present day. 
Besides, the firm was engaged in other transac- 
tions. They divided among themselves the 
profits of Capt. St. Pierre's exploring expedi- 
tion, which made no discoveries, but brought 
back furs of great value; the governor's share, 
alone, it is said, amounting to three hundred 
thousand livres. In all the gains of the Green 
Bay ring, from their various enterprises, must 
have amounted to millions. 

While thus engaged Marin became the hero 
of an exploit more noted than anything else in 
the traditionary annals of Wisconsin. But 
heretofore the date of it has not been fixed; 
and even the chief actor has been known only 

(1) Memoire de. Bougainville sur I'Etat de la Nouvelle 
France. Maxgry. Memoires Ineditea, p. 59. 



THE WEST IN REVOLT. 



155 



as a "prominent French trader," otherwise 
unidentified. 

Some time before, the Fox Indians had crept 
back to their old homes on the Fox river and 
with their wonted arrogance, began to levy- 
tribute upon the passing traders. The com- 
merce of the whole Upper Mississippi country- 
was at their mercy. Marin resolved to put a 
stop to this; and quietly collecting all his 
available forces, he set out from Green Bay 
with the utmost secrecy. Arriving at a point 
some miles below the Fox village, the force 
was divided, one part disembarking and going 
by land to attack the savages in the rear. 
The rest laid down in the canoes and were 
covered over by large tarpaulins such as were 
used by traders to shield their goods from the 
weather. Two men to row each boat were 
left in view. It was to all appearance a peace- 
ful trading fleet. 

In due time the Foxes discovered the ap- 
proach of the fleet. Rushing to the shore they 
hung out a lighted torch, the usual signal for 
the traders to land at this aboriginal custom 
house. Then they squatted upon the bank 
and waited patiently for their customary dues. 
The boats rounded to, in obedience to the sig- 
nal and drew close to the shore; the savages 



156 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

Still sat expectant but serene, Avith all the 
grave decorum of Indians upon a state occa- 
sion. 

Suddenly the tarpaulins were flung off from 
the boats. A long line of armed men sprang 
up, with their guns pointed at the astounded 
Foxes. It was as if the infernal flames had 
burst from the depths of the river. The sav- 
ages had hardly sprung to their feet before 
many were mowed down by a volley of mus- 
ketry and the discharge of a swivel gun loaded 
with grape and canister. The rest, with a yell 
of dismay, fled to their village, closely pursued 
by the French. Here a new horror confronted 
the flying mob. The flanking party had by 
this time reached the rear of the village; some 
of them, creeping stealthily in, had set on fire 
the frail bark cabins; and the wind was wrap- 
ping everything in flames. 

The Foxes, rushing wildly about amidst 
their burning cabins, found themselves 
hemmed in by a storm of bullets from front and 
rear. Women and children ran to and fro, 
shrieking and blind with fright; mothers 
snatched their babes and fled they knew not 
Avhither. 

But the warriors, long schooled by the 
French in such horrors, rallied and fought des- 



THE WEST IN REVOLT. i 57 

perately. Out of the smoke and flame they 
flung themselves against the force in the rear 
and struggled to cut their way through, with 
knives and tomahawks. Many succeeded and 
escaped into the forest, followed by throngs 
of women and children. The rest were hewn 
down, singing their death-song amidst the 
flames. No quarter was given and none was 
asked. In a few moments all was over. 
What a little while before had been a peaceful 
village, was a^heap of ashes studded with the 
dead. 

As a mere tragedy, this is rivalled by many 
others in the appalling story of the war against 
the Foxes. But the grotesque surprise, .the 
grim glare of humor lighting up the horror, 
makes an altogether matchless scene. Ac- 
cording to the traditions, Marin struck other 
blows against his enemy, but the accounts are 
too confused to enter into sober history. Suf- 
fice it that the Foxes were expelled forever 
from their ancient home and once more found 
a refuge on the Wisconsin. 

But let us do no injustice to Marin. He 
was a soldier with a military code of morals; 
but he was wise, brave and loyal to France. 
The stern and^^incorruptible Du Quesne, ad- 



I 58 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

mired him greatly' and selected him as the one 
man fitted to command on the Ohio, in that 
critical hour when the Indian revolt had 
reached its height and New France was begin- 
ning its last struggle for life. Thus he was 
called from his speculations at Green Bay to 
nobler tasks. A few months afterward he 
died; and Du Quesne wrote to the king that 
"the death of Marin is an irreparable loss to 
the colony."" 

(1) New York Coll. Documents, X, 254. Also Margry, 
VI. 634, 

(2) Du Quesne to the Minister, Oct. 7, 1753. Can. Ar- 
chives. 1887, p. cxcvi. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE FALL OF THE FRENCH EMPIRE. 
1752-I763. 

The Sauks, after their expulsion from the 
Green Bay region, built a town on the banks 
of the Wisconsin near what is now Prairie du 
Sac. Carver, who travelled through Wiscon- 
sin in 1766, describes it as the largest and best 
built Indian town that he ever saw. "It con- 
tained about ninety houses, each large enough 
for several families, built of heavy planks, 
neatly jointed and covered so compactly with 
bark as to keep out the most penetrating rains. 
Before the doors were placed comfortable sheds 
in which the inhabitants sat when the weather 
would permit and smoked their pipes. The 
streets were both regular and spacious, appear- 
ing more like a civilized town than the abode 
of savages. The land was rich, and corn, 
beans and melons were raised in large quanti- 
ties."' 

(1) Carver. Travels. 47. A very admirable account of 
this noted traveller is given by Durrie. Wisconain Hist. 
Coll., VI, 220-270. 



l6o HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

The Foxes, after their long wanderings, fi- 
nally settled near the mouth of the Wisconsin, 
on the site of Prairie du Chien. They had 
selected their new location with characteristic 
sagacity, and it soon became the great mart of 
the Northwest. There the adjacent tribes and 
even those from the remote branches of the 
Mississippi annually assembled about the end 
of May; and it was determined in a general 
council whether it would be best to dispose of 
their furs to the traders upon the spot or to 
transport them to the Lakes or to Louisiana. 

Mining, as well as commerce, contributed 
to the prosperity of the Foxes. Towards the 
close of the 17th century the Miamis had 
worked the lead mines south of the Wisconsin, 
but probably only after the rude fashion known 
to the Iroquois in Canada, who hewed out long 
splinters of ore and cut them up into bullets.' 
But the Foxes smelted the ores and carried on 
a regular mining industry with such jealous 
secrecy that no white man was permitted to 
come near their mines. ^ 

From their firm friends, the Sioux, they had 
obtained horses and learned the art of horse- 

(1) Boucher. Canada. 

(2) Early History Lead Regions. Wis. Hist. Coll., VI, 
272. Washburne, Ibid., X 244. Shaw. Ibid., II, 228. 



FALL OF THE FRENCH EMPIRE. i6l 

manship, so that in a few years their warriors 
were all finely mounted.' 

The thoughtful reader will be surprised by 
these tokens of great prosperity and progress 
on the part of a people who for more than 
forty years had been crushed under almost 
every conceivable form of disaster and suffer- 
ing. And his wonder will grow when he con- 
siders the degradation of the tribes that had 
clung most closely to the F'rench. Carver, 
who overflows with praises of the Sauks and 
Foxes, describes the Chippewas as "the nasti- 
est people" he had ever seen, and the Illinois 
everywhere were a bye-word on account of 
their vile habits and their cowardice." 

But the explanation is simple. The tribes 
that had been the most hostile to the white 
man, his faith and modes of life, had best pre- 
served the national spirit, the respect for an- 
cestral and public opinion, the esprit dc corps 
upon which savage virtue depends. "They 
combine," writes Carver, ^ "as if actuated only 

(1) Long, Voyages and Travels, 149. 

(2) Pitman, Account of the Missis.sippi, London, 1770, 
p. 53, describes the Illinois as a "poor, debauched and das- 
tardly people," but praises the Mascoutins, Miami-'>, etc., 
as brave and warlike. Parkman admits the extraordinary 
degradation of the Illinois. La Salle, 207, note. 

(3) Travels, 412. 
11 



1 62 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

by one soul. The honor of their tribe and the 
welfare of the nation is the first and most pre- 
dominating emotion of their hearts. Hence 
proceed in great measure, all their virtues and 
vices. They brave every danger, endure the 
most exquisite torments and expire triumph- 
ing in their fortiude, not as a personal quali- 
fication, but as a national characteristic." 

The wisest of the Indians saw that they must 
exclude the white man's influence and his faith, 
if they wished to preserve their own polity and 
the special savage virtues. When the Sene- 
cas, out of their conquests, gave the Shawnees 
a country to dwell in, they charged them never 
to receive Christianity from the English. * 'Be- 
fore the missionaries came," they said, "the 
Indians were an honest, sober and innocent 
people, but now most of them are rogues; they 
formerly had the fear of God, but now they 
hardly believe his existence. " ' Without accept- 
ing all that, one may see that the higher 
faith must necessarily be destructive even to 
what is best in the lower. 

When in 1752 the elder Marin was ordered 
to take command on the Ohio, his son succed- 
ed him at Green Bay. Soon a new partner- 
(1) Long. Voyages and Travels, 32. 



FALL OF THE FRENCH EMPIRE. 163 

ship was formed, having the same equivocal ob- 
ject as the old one, but composed of the 
younger Marin, and Rigaud, a brother of the 
governor of Canada. The affairs of the new 
firm prospered, and in two years the partners 
divided between them a profit of one hundred 
and twelve thousand livres.' 

Outside of these transactions, Marin did 
good service for New France. He drew back 
to the colony for a time, at least, the fur 
trade of the Northwest, which was being di- 
verted to Hudson's Bay."" "In two years," he 
claimed, "I travelled more than two thousand 
leagues on foot, often in snow and ice, running 
a thousand dangers from savage tribes, and 
meeting privations of every sort. In those 
two years I conquered more than twenty na- 
tions, who have since been loyal to France and 
made war in our behalf. 3" There is doubtless 
some excess of color in this, but still Marin 
did brilliant work. 

(1) Margry. Memoires Inedites, 59. 

(2) Dobbs. Acco2mt of the Hudson's Bay Countries, 
London, IT-to, p. 43. According to a pamphlet printed in 
1750, the heavy fui-s went to Hudson's Bay; the lighter to 
Canada. Short Statement, etc., p. 16. This pamphlet can 
be found in the library of the Minnesota Historical So- 
ciety. 

(.^) Margry, YI, 65-i. Also N. Y. Coll. Docvments. X, 
263. 



1 64 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

A still more notable name is that of Charles 
Langlade, who came to Green Bay as a trader 
about the middle of the century. The brilliant 
service and the utter obscurity of this man 
cause one to almost despair of history. 

In 1752 the revolt in the Valley of the Ohio 
was at its height, the Miamis and other tribes 
having entirely renounced allegiance to 
France. To strike terror into the hearts of 
these savages, an expedition mainly composed 
of the faithful Ottav^^as, was sent from northern 
Michigan, and Langlade, whose father was a 
Frenchman but his mother a sister of the Otta- 
wa head-chief, was placed in command. The 
young man, then only twenty-three years old, 
marched swiftly to western Ohio, with a force 
ot thirty Frenchman and 250 Indians. On the 
morning of the 21st of June, he suddenly ap- 
peared before Picqua, a town of four hundred 
families, the strongest in the Valley of the 
Ohio and the residence of the grand chief of 
the Miami confederacy. The surprise was 
complete, and after a short but fierce resist- 
ence, the Miamis surrendered. One English 
trader was killed and five taken prisoners, the 
town was burned and the grand chief of the 
confederacy sacrificed at a cannibal feast. 



FALL OF THE FRENCH EMPIRE. 165 

Then young Langlade swiftl)^ departed, leav- 
ing the French flag flying over the ruins. 

"Thus," says Bancroft, "began the contest 
that was to scatter death broadcast through- 
out the world." The immediate results of this 
sharp and sudden blow were very great; the 
Indians, dismayed by such prompt vengeance, 
returned to their old allegiance, and soon 
throughout the Valley of the Ohio there floated 
no banner but that of France. But while the 
colonial authorities exulted in his success, they 
dismissed the low-born Langlade with disdain. 
"As he is not in the king's service, and has 
married a squaw," wrote Du Ouesne, the gov- 
ernor,"! will ask for him onl}'a pension of two 
hundred francs, which will flatter him infinitely.' 
The young leader, therefore, resumed his 
former work at Green Bay, bartering calicos, 
needles and rum for the furs of the Indians. 
But three years later he was called forth again, 
to lead his faithful Ottawas to the relief of the 
little garrison at Fort Du Ouesne, then imper- 
illed by the approach of Braddock and his 
army. And to the military genius of this un- 
trained half-breed, was due that wonderful 



(1) Du Quesne to the Minister, Oct. 25, 1752. Can 
Achives, 1887, p. cxci. Also Parkman. Montcalm and 
WolfQ, II, 84-85. Parkraan'stone is as lofty as the French- 
man's. 



1 66 HISTORY OF WISCOXSiy. 

"Defeat of Braddock," the fame of which re- 
sounded throughout Europe, taught the thir- 
teen colonies to despise the English regulars 
and thus led the way to the War of Indepen- 
dence. The statement seems incredible, but 
as will be seen in a note below,' is supported 
by the most irrefragable proofs. 

We cannot follow further the life of Lang- 
lade. Suffice it that throughout the war he 
continued to render valuable although not 
quite so splendid services to France — each 
year leading down the Indian allies from the 
West to the aid of Montcalm. But it was all 
an unavailing struggle in behalf of what long 
had been a lost cause. The Fox wars had 

(1) First: Gen. Burgoyne, writes to Lord Germain, July 
11. 1777, of Langlade as "the very man, who with these 
tribes, (Ottawas, etc.) projected and executed Braddock's 
defeat." Expedition from Canada, London, 1786. Ap- 
pendix, p. XXI. Second: Anburey, an officer in Bur- 
goyne's array, wi'ote in 1777, that they were expecting the 
Ottawas, led by St. Luc, and Langlade, and adds that "the 
latter is the person who at the head of the tribe which he 
now commands planned and executed the defeat of Gen* 
Braddock." {Journey, I, 315.) Third: The very circum- 
stantial account given by Langlade himself, in Grignon's 
Kecollections. (Wis. Hist. Coll., 111,212-21.5.) Fourth: 
The testimony of De Peyster, commanding at Mackinaw, 
who in his Miscellanies alludes to Langlade as "a French 
officer who had been instrumental in defeating Braddock." 
{Ibid., VII, 1.35, note.) Concerning silence of French offi- 
cial records, see. Ibid., p. 150-1. 



FALL OF THE FRENCH EMPIRE. 167 

shown twenty years before that it was impos- 
sible for French despotism to hold America. 
The sentence then pronounced upon the French 
Dominion, was finally carried into execution 
at the fall of Quebec. 

After the occupation of the West by the 
English,' Langlade returned to Green Bay and 
founded there the first permanent settlement 
of white men in Wisconsin — a rude little vil- 
lage of French traders, the humble monument 
of a fallen Empire. 

(1) In Sir Guy Carleton's report of 1767, Langlade's resi- 
dence is set down as still at Miehillimackinac Brymner, 
Can. Archivefi, 1888, p. 45. . 



CHAPTER XII. 

TliE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. 
1763. 

The English in their occupation of the coun- 
try, adopted the French policy. They did not 
design to form settlements in the West. It 
was feared that colonies in so remote a region 
could not be controlled and therefore the coun- 
try beyond the Alleghanies was shut against 
the emigrant. Royal orders forbade the Vir- 
ginians from settling in the valley of the Ohio; 
in Pennsylvania it was even proposed to aban- 
don Fort Pitt, and to bring all the settlers 
back to the eastern side of the mountains. 
"The country to the westward quite to the 
Mississippi, was intended to be a desert for the 
Indians to hunt in and to inhabit."' 

Such a policy made it easy for Pontiac to 
organize his famous conspiracy. That bloody 
postscript to the history of the French Domin- 
ion has been strangely misinterpreted; it is 
commonly conceived of as a general uprising 
of the Western Indians against the English; 

(1) Bancroft, III, 401-2. 



CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. 169 

and its chief historian' declares that "the 
whole Algonquin stock with a few unimpor- 
tant exceptions," were engaged in it. But all 
that is wild and wide of the mark. The con- 
spiracy was confined to what we have described 
throughout this history as the French Indians, 
consisting mostly of refugee tribes who had al- 
ways clung to France, and it did not even in- 
clude all of them. That large part of the Ot- 
tawas that dwelt in Northern Michigan, wav- 
ered, and as we shall see, finally sided with 
the English. The Chippewas around Mack- 
inaw were active conspirators; but the main 
body dwelling at Chequamegon Bay — where 
were the council house and sacred fire of the 
nation — took no part in the revolt. - 

Beyond these refugee races the conspiracy 
did not spread. The Miamis, the dominant 
confederacy in the Ohio valley, stood aloof. 
Above all, the tribes massed upon the Fox and 
Wisconsin rivers — the Menominees, Winne- 
bagoes, Sauks and Foxes — adhered firmly to 
the English cause; and it was their prompt, 
decisive action which sealed the fate of the 
conspiracy. Thus to the end Wisconsin re- 
mained the pivot upon which the fortunes of 
the West revolved. 

(1) Parkman, Conspiracy of Pontiac, I, 187. 

(2) Warren, i/is<. Ojibways. Minn. Hist. Coll., V. 210. 



170 



HISTORY OF WISCONSIX. 



To show this we must go back two years. 
On the 1 2th of October, 1761, Lieut. Gorrell, 
with seventeen men, arrived in Green Bay to 
assume command of the Northwest. Already 
the fomenters of revolt had been there. Some 
French traders had passed up Fox river on 
their way to the Sioux; and although in Eng- 
lish employ they had "done all that laid in 
their power to persuade the Bay Indians to fall 
upon the English, telling them that the latter 
were very weak and that it could be done very 
readily." 

Some of the young warriors, always eager 
for any fray, were willing enough. But the 
ancient hatred and scorn of the French flashed 
forth in the answer of the head-chief of the 
Sauks. "The old and great man of the Sauk 
nation whom they call a king, told the French- 
men that they were English dogs or slaves now 
that they were conquered by the English; 
that they only wanted his men to fight the 
English for them, but he said that they should 
not. He called the French old squaws and 
commanded the young men to desist, which 
they did and went to their hunting." ' 

The winter was spent in repairing the old 
French fort and the buildings; it was not until 

(1) Gorr ell's Journal. Wis. Hist, Coll., I, 26. 



CONSPIRACY OF PONT I AC. 



171 



the next season, after the Indians had returned 
from their hunting-grounds, that any councils 
were held. First came the Menominees. 
"They were very poor," they said, "having 
lost three hundred warriors lately with the 
small-pox and most of their chiefs in the late 
war in which they had been engaged by the 
French commandant here against the English." 
They were very glad to find that the English 
were pleased to pardon them as they did not 
expect it and were conscious that they did not 
merit it. They asked for a gun-smith, and 
modestly suggested that "the French always 
gave them rum as a true token of friendship." 
They rejoiced to hear that the English traders 
were coming among them. "We have al- 
ready found by experience," said the sagacious 
savages, "that the goods are one-half cheaper 
than when the French were amongst us." 

Some Winnebago chiefs were present at this 
council and spoke to the same effect. A fort- 
night later, ambassadors arrived from the 
Sauks and Foxes, with pledges of peace and 
good-will. In August the chief of a more dis- 
tant town of the Winnebagoes came to declare 
that his people had never been at war with the 
English, nor could the French commander 
persuade him to it as he never knew of any 



172 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

harm the English had done him. With him 
came also four ambassadors from the lowas, 
who said that "they had come from very far 
to see if I would shake hands with them and 
forgive them as I had done the rest."' 

In March, 1763, the long looked for depu- 
ties of the Sioux arrived. They brought a let- 
ter from their king in which he expressed his 
joy at the coming of the English, asked for 
friendship and trade, and promised that if the 
Chippewas or any other tribe should make 
trouble, he would come with his warriors and 
wipe them from the face of the earth. 

Thus all the tribes of the Northwest, from 
Lake Michigan to the Missouri, had welcomed 
the English with unbounded delight. The 
time was now near \\hen their loyalty was to 
be put to the test. On the 15th of June, the 
news, came like a thunderbolt out of a clear sk}-, 
that the Chippewas had captured Mackinaw 
and massacred a part of its garrison. Pontiac 
and his fellow - conspirators had begun their 
work. 

Not long before Pontiac had secretly visited 
Wisconsin and won over the Milwaukee band, 
a mixed village of refractory and turbulent In- 
dians, the offscouring of many different tribes. 

(1) Ibid., p. 30-36. 



CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. 



173 



But the real tribes of Wisconsin had indig- 
nantly spurned his messages and war-belts. 
"I want no such message. I mean to do no 
wrong to my English friends," Carron the 
grand chief of the Menominees, had ans- 
wered. ' 

But Gorrell knew nothing of this, and was 
naturally very much alarmed. In an agony 
of suspense he went to the Menominee chiefs 
to find out what they were about to do. A 
grand council of the whole tribe was called, 
and with an ardor unusual among the stoics of 
the forest, all agreed that they would go to 
the relief of the English at Mackinaw. Swift 
runners were also sent to the other Indian na- 
tions. Three days afterward the chiefs of the 
Winnebagoes, Sauks and Foxes arrived in great 
haste, saying that their warriors were on the 
way. With them came Pennensha, a French 
trader, but a firm friend of the English, bring- 
ing new pledges of fidelity and assistance from 
the Sioux. When all the warriors had arrived 
another great council was convened. "All the 
chiefs said," writes Gorrel, "that they were 
glad they could now show the English how 
much they loved them, and that we should find 

(1) Grignon' 8 Recollections. Wis. Hist. Coll., Ill, 226. 



174 



HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 



that they would keep their promise of the year 
before.' 

Preparations were speedily made and then 
the relieving expedition set out from Green 
Bay. The Indians, fully alive to the gravity 
of the crisis, took precautions quite unusual for 
them; every night before landing to camp, 
they sent a large party to scour the woods in 
every direction in order to guard against sur- 
prise. "The king of the Sauks," writes Gorrel, 
always went in the batteau with me, and would 
always lay in the tent, so great was their care." 
When they drew near the village of the Otta- 
was, whom they believed to be traitors at 
heart,- they made ready for battle; the Eng- 
lish batteau was placed in the centre; the Me- 
nominees, stripped for action, went in the 
front. 

At the sight of this formidable array, the 
Ottawas were overawed. They resolved to side 
with the English, although the other half of 

(1) Parkman. Conspirarij of Pontiuc, I, 363, at a loss 
foi" any plausible explanation of the action of the Wiscon- 
sin Indians, ascribes it to Lieut. "Gorrel's prudence." 
There is not the least spark of evidence to this effect. 
The reader of the preceding pages needs no explanation of 
the eagerness with -which these savages welcomed the 
English as the conquerors of the hated French. 

(2) Before leaving Green Bay, they told Gorrel not to 
trust himself to the Ottawas. Wis. Hist. Coll., I, 40. 



CONSPIRA C Y OF POXTIA C. 175 

their nation at Detroit were fighting under the 
lead of Pontiac. And so the expedition was re- 
ceived with clamors of welcome, salutes were 
fired, pipes of peace were smoked, and then came 
feasting, dancing and councils without end. At 
first the Wisconsin Indians demanded that the 
Ottawas should join with them in reinstating the 
English commander, Capt. Etherington, at 
Mackinaw. But this the Ottawas were not will- 
ing to attempt, although they promised to do all 
in their power to conduct the English back to 
Montreal. And it is not likely that the latter, 
after they learned what was going on at De- 
troit and in the lower country, wished to re- 
main. 

Gradually the bloodthirsty Chippewas also 
began to weaken. On the 13th day of July 
they came to the English very penitently. 
"They said that although it was the Chippe- 
was that struck, it was the Ottawas that be- 
gan the war at Detroit and instigated them to 
do the same. If the General would forgive 
them they would never act thus again." Capt. 
Etherington replied that if they expected any 
mercy they must give up their prisoners. 

The next day the Chippewas returned and 
asked for rum. "Having no rum to give 
them," writes Gorrel, "they went away and 



176 HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 

said no more to us." That was the last of 
Pontiac's great conspiracy so far as the Northern 
nations were concerned. In a little while the 
English went on their way to Montreal, safe 
and rejoicing. 

All that summer, the conspiracy, like a 
wounded serpent, dragged its hideous length 
through the Valley of the Ohio, carrying horror 
wherever it went. In the autumn it came to 
an end. Pontiac, dejected and sullen, wan- 
dered off to the West, and was killed while ca- 
rousing among the Illinois. 

How little this noted conspiracy has been 
understood, is shown by a strange error into 
which, at this point, its chief historian has 
fallen. The Sauks and Foxes and other 
friends of Pontiac, we are gravely told, rose 
in fury to avenge his death, visiting their 
vengeance upon the Illinois as his murderers.' 
And the consequent carnage is described in 
terms of Homeric song. But the whole state- 
ment, however classically adorned, is mar- 
velously untrue. 

Our brief recital has proved that the Wiscon- 



(1) Parkman, Conspiracy of Pontiac, II, 312. Parknian 
blindly follows a confused traditionary account given by 
some writers in the early part of this century. The war of 
the Sauks and Foxes against the Illinois was going on be- 
fore Pontiac was born. 



COXSP IRA C Y OF P ONTIA C. 177 

sin Indians, so far from being- the allies and 
avengers of Pontiac, were his chief enemies. 
Their resistance broke up his plans and brought 
all his schemes to nought. If the prompt ac- 
tion of the Wisconsin Indians had not over- 
awed the Ottawas and curbed the Chippewas, 
the latter, after completing their work in the 
North, would have gone to the help of their 
brethren at Detroit. The success of Pontiac 
would then have been assured. The irreso- 
lute Miamis would have flung themselves fully 
into the fight. And with the active aid of the 
Wisconsin tribes and their allies in the North- 
west, the flames of revolt would have swept 
the continent. 

One result would certainl\- have followed. 
The contest for American independence, which 
virtually began the year after the conspiracy 
ended, would have been indefinitely postponed. 
The thirteen colonies, so long as their frontier 
was infested by hordes of fierce and irreconcil- 
able savages — "the most formidable foe upon 
the face of the earth"' — would have little 
thought or desire of separating from the moth- 
er country. But all that was averted by the 

(1) Barre, the companion of Wolfe, a man who knew In- 
dians well, thus declared in the British parliament- Ban- 
.croft, Unifed States, III, :r,7.. 
12 



I 7 8 ^IS TOR Y OF Wise ON SIN. 

prompt action of the Wisconsin Indians at the 
very moment when everything hung trembHng 
in the balance. 

Thus the Power that so often uses the weak 
things of the world to confound the mighty, 
used these savages for two great purpos- 
es; first, to undermine the rule of French des- 
potism in the West; then, to secure the Eng- 
lish in firm and peaceable possession of the 
continent. For a few years England held the 
grand empire in trust and then handed it over 
to its rightful inheritors, the freemen of 
America. 

So much was done in Wisconsin for Ameri- 
can independence. Eet no pitiful prejudice of 
race obscure the work done by these wild, 
unconscious servants of liberty. Their man- 
ners were rude and their morals chaotic, but 
at heart they were less savage than their white 
antagonists. They had not attained to the 
niceties of civilization. Neither had the three 
hundred who died at Thermopylae nor the vic- 
tors upon the field of Tours. 



[THE EM).] 






''\ <^i 









:S^ 



























-■>ii^/ 









V -i^ 



WM 












^•^^^^ 












'0^ 



I 



iilj .^ 
















^' 















Vv; 



~# 



.X 



((// 



